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THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

A MANUAL FOR COURSE I IN PUBLIC SPEAKING 



BY 



RAY KEESLAR IMMEL 

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF PUBLIC SPEAKING 
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN 



GEORGE WAHR, Publisher 

Ann Arbor, Michigan 

192 i 



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Copyright, 1921 
GEORGE WAHR 



OCT 24 M 



THE ANN ARBOR PRESS 
ANN ARBOR 



§)C!.A624942 



To the countless generations of beginners in the art 
of Public Speaking, past, present and future, and es- 
pecially to those with whom it has been my happy 
privilege to work in the friendly relation of teacher 
and pupil, this book is dedicated 

The Author. 



FOREWORD — TO THE TEACHER 

Why does the average student elect Course I in 
Public Speaking? What should Course I do for the 
student? The answer to these two questions will be., 
an answer to the much discussed question of the con- 
tent of Course I. 

An extended inquiry among students of Course I 
during a period of over ten years has convinced me 
that what the average thinking student wants and 
expects of Course I is just about what he ought to 
have, and that consequently the two questions may 
be answered as one. The average student evidently 
wishes to be able to stand up before a group of peo- 
ple and speak, with reasonable assurance that what he 
is doing is being done in the right way, and without 
the fear that he may be making himself ridiculous. He 
wishes to learn to speak clearly and persuasively. He 
is not interested primarily, or even secondarily, in 
theories of speech as such. He simply wants to learn 
to express himself before others with reasonable ef- 
fectiveness and with confidence. This is the whole 
of it. 

A small minority of the class will be interested in 
the theory because they expect to teach the subject, 
but this group is too small to warrant organizing the 
course to suit their peculiar interests. Moreover, ad- 
vanced courses can be organized for such students 



6 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

when they have acquired a reasonable degree of skill 
in actual platform work, without which skill no stu- 
dent should be encouraged to specialize as a teacher 
of the subject. A large proportion of students never 
take courses beyond the first or second. A great ma- 
jority want the work for purely practical reasons. Is 
it not reasonable that the material of Course I should 
be adapted to the needs of this great majority of the 
class ? 

But, it may be objected, does it necessarily follow 
that what the student wants is what he ought to have ? 
Not necessarily, as a general principle. But, in this 
particular case, I believe that the average student has 
stated his needs correctly. He wants to learn to 
speak well. Why should he not be taught to do so? 
Why load him up with a lot of theory? It is surely a 
full sized job for one or two courses simply to teach 
him to speak well. It is surely a task worthy of being 
undertaken. There are plenty of other courses in 
every university, college or high school, where he may 
pursue pure science, knowledge for its own sake. If 
his peculiar aims in seeking a college education make 
necessary a knowledge of Anatomy and Physiology, 
there are departments where these may be studied. If 
it is Psychology that he needs, there are courses where 
this is taught by specialists. He can study the physics 
of sound in the Physics department. But there is 
only one place where he can learn to speak under spe- 
cialized instruction and criticism, and that is in the 
Public Speaking department. 



FOREWORD 7 

A teacher of Public Speaking should by all means 
know something of the anatomy and physiology and 
physics of the vocal mechanism. He should be ac- 
quainted with the psychology of the speech process. 
This knowledge is an aid to intelligent teaching and 
criticism. But this knowledge is not, to any great 
extent, necessary to the practical work of the speaker. 
It takes up time that might much better be spent in 
practice and in criticism, and hence, since there are 
only a certain number of days for a given course, its 
presentation and elaboration not only divide the at- 
tention and interest of the student but keep him away 
from the primary and essential business of the course, 
namely, platform practice. 

We teachers sometimes lose our sense of perspec- 
tive. We get to thinking that ours is the only subject 
in the curriculum. We get an over-exalted notion of 
our work. We must remember that most of our stu- 
dents do not study Public Speaking as an end in it- 
self but as an aid in their chosen work. I do not be- 
lieve that we Public Speaking people are any worse 
offenders in this than teachers in other departments. 
But I do believe that if every teacher would try to 
remember that his particular subject is not the only 
one taught, and that the greater number of his stu- 
dents do not intend to become specialists in his par- 
ticular line, but only wish to get what that line has to 
contribute to their general culture and preparation for 
life, — I say if each teacher would remember this, I 
believe that many a student would find it easier to get 
something of definite value out of a given course. 



8 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

On the other hand, I would not give courses in 
Public Speaking without any theory at all. The prac- 
tice work of a course needs a guide. But there is a 
difference between giving a theory of delivery as a 
basis for practice and setting out to give a complete 
theory of speech. The purpose of this book is to in- 
dicate what I believe to be the proper theory for 
Course I and to furnish a set of practice assignments 
for a class of 24 students meeting three times a week 
for one semester. 

The book has grown out of something over ten 
years of experience in Course I, most of it at the Uni- 
versity of Michigan. It is, of course, a statement of 
the work of Course I as we conduct it here. It does 
not pretend to be the last word on the subject; it is 
written from the point of view of our department and 
its methods. Others will have other standards and 
other methods. This is offered to any who may find 
it useful. 

To the best of my belief, there is nothing new in 
this book. If it has any merit, that merit consists in 
what is left out, and not in any new contribution to 
the field. It is an attempt to simplify the work of 
Course I for the student and for the teacher. A few 
words of explanation are offered : 

(1) With us, Course I is purely a course in de- 
livery. We believe that the problems involved in de- 
livery are sufficient to take up the whole time of such 
a course, and that if a student takes only one course 
it should be a course in delivery. A student needs 



FOREWORD 9 

special supervision and criticism in delivery. Plence, 
if only one course is to be taken it should cover the 
ground that is least easily covered without a teacher. 
(2) The practice is based on memorized selections. 
We at Michigan are convinced that the problems of 
delivery are far more easily and successfully met with 
the aid of committed practice speeches than with ex- 
temporaneous ones. A really extemporaneous speech 
can never be given twice alike; a committed speech 
can be. In calling attention to faults of delivery it 
is an advantage to be able to have the speech, or a sec- 
tion of it, given over again, and thus to have the fault 
repeated and made plain. The fault can thus be seen, 
heard and known, and the remedy can be applied. 
Then, too, the student, freed from the necessity of or- 
dering his own ideas under particularly difficult con- 
ditions, can give his whole attention to the problems of 
delivery. But since the extemporaneous speech is the 
most practical type for the average person, an at- 
tempt is made to supplement these committed assign- 
ments with extemporaneous assignments, to the end 
that the principles learned and practiced in the com- 
mitted work may be used as far as possible in the more 
practical type of extemporaneous speaking. 

In regard to the choice of selections for practice, we 
have tried everything from Demosthenes to Wilson, 
and have found that the types represented here are 
the most satisfactory. The great orations are often 
too formal and too ponderous for students whose 
speaking relations will for the most part always be on 



io THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

a commonplace level. Then, too, they are usually 
on subjects that have little or no relation to the stu- 
dent's interests and that are often absolutely unknown 
to him. The speeches here given have a universal ap- 
peal, have a goodly amount of humor, are, for the 
most part, conversational and easy in style, and make 
an appeal to student interest. The student can get 
into the spirit of them easily. Given in toto, as they 
are, he can grasp the whole thought and know ex- 
actly what his assignment means in relation to the 
whole speech. This is not always true of "selec- 
tions". The writer believes that any suspicion of 
"propaganda", especially religious, will be dispelled 
by noting that Ingersoll and Bryan stand side by side. 

(3) Lastly, there is an attempt to stress what the 
writer believes are the things of fundamental impor- 
tance to the student of Course I: (a) sense of com- 
munication, (b) physical vitality, (c) enthusiasm, 
(d) earnestness, (e) platform appearance, (f) ges- 
ture, (g) modulations of quality, force and pitch, (h) 
accurate and distinct pronunciation, (i) rate and 
grouping, and (j) emphasis. All of these have been 
simplified in their treatment, and the discussion limited 
to the most practical considerations. 

Course I must have a teacher. Consequently, pre- 
supposing a teacher, exercises have been omitted. No 
two teachers use the same ones anyway. There are 
so many books that contain good exercises that it 
seems unnecessary to add exercises here. This is a 
guide, a manual for Course I, not an exhaustive text 



FOREWORD j i 

book of theory. Short lists of books for collateral 
reading are given after chapters on theory, and the 
teacher can use these as freely as he desires. Good 
exercises are to be found in almost any standard text. 
I have thought it sufficient here to stress the things 
upon which exercise is to be given. If the teacher be- 
lieves that a more elaborate statement of the four ele- 
ments, quality, force, pitch and time, is desirable, I 
believe that Fulton and Trueblood's "Practical Elo- 
cution" contains the best complete statement of these 
subjects in print. In the twenty-eight years that this 
book has been in the hands of students it has not 
been improved upon as a text on elocution, and many 
of the books in this particular field have been based up- 
on it, sometimes more freely than the authors have in- 
dicated. We use this book at Michigan, with this 
present manual as a guide. Professor C. H. Wool- 
bert's recent book "Fundamentals of Speech", pub- 
lished by Harpers, contains the most recent and best 
treatment of the subject from the psychological point 
of view. A large portion of Professor Winans' "Pub- 
lic Speaking", published by The Century Co., deals 
with delivery, and is one of the best books in the field. 
If this manual helps to clear the air somewhat and 
offers a solution of the question of what to teach in 
Course I, if the practice speeches appended to the 
chapters on theory prove of value to other teachers as 
they have to us at Michigan, if anything has been 
added to the effectiveness of instruction in the elemen- 
tary course and any contribution made to the joys of 



ia THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

the student in mastering one of the most interesting 
and fascinating activities in the world, then this mod- 
est book will have served its purpose. 

I wish to express here my especial appreciation of 
the many helps and hints I have had from Professor 
Thomas C. Trueblood in whose department I have for 
ten years taught Course I, and to whose book, "Prac- 
tical Elocution", I am deeply indebted for my first and 
best knowledge of the Elements of Vocal Expression; 
to Professor R. D. T. Hollister under whom I first 
pursued Course I and to whose inspiration I owe a 
large part of my interest in this subject; to my col- 
leagues, Professor Louis Eich, Mr. George Wilner, 
Mr. John H. Hathaway and Mr. Carl Brandt, who 
have contributed much to the formation of my ideas 
on this subject through many friendly and interest- 
ingly frank discussions ; and lastly to Mr. G. Arthur 
Andrews, now Principal of Grand Rapids High 
School and President of Grand Rapids Junior Col- 
lege, in collaboration with whom I first worked out a 
formulation of the content of Course I. 

Ray K. Immsi,, 
Ann Arbor, Michigan. 

July, 1921. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Foreword — To the Teacher 5 

Chapter I. The Nature of a Good Speech 15 

Chapter II. Fundamental Qualities of Delivery. 23 

Chapter III. Formal Qualities of Delivery — 

Action 34 

Chapter IV. Formal Qualities of Delivery — 

Voice 49 

Standard for the Course 66 

Schedule of Speeches for the Semester 68 

Suggestions for Memorizing 71 

"Acres of Diamonds" 73 

— Russeu, H. Conweu, 

"The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child" 109 

— Robert G. Ingersoix 

"A Tribute to Ebon C. Ingersoll" 162 

— Robert G. Ingersoix 

"The Prince of Peace" 165 

— Wileiam Jennings Bryan 

"Sour Grapes". . 196 

— ■ Edward A. Ott 

"The Race Problem in the South" 238 

— Henry W. Grady 

"The New South" 263 

— Henry W. Grady 

"The Rise and Fall of the Mustache" 273 

— Robert J. Burdette 



THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 



CHAPTER I 
THE NATURE OF A GOOD SPEECH 

Public Speaking a Useful Art. We frequently 
hear people say, "Public speaking is a fine art." Of 
course what most of them mean is that public speak- 
ing is a very difficult and intricate art, requiring a 
high degree of skill. They usually mean, too, that the 
orator, like the poet, is "born, not made". But allow- 
ing for those w T ho thus use the term "fine art" in a 
loose sense, there are still many who regard public 
speaking as an end in itself, as an adornment of life, 
as a thing which is its own excuse for being. They 
think of it in connection with music, poetry, paint- 
ing and sculpture, and they think of studying it as 
one studies these fine arts. 

Now public speaking, as distinguished from public 
reading, is not a fine art at all. It is a useful art. It 
is not an end in itself, nor its own excuse for being. It 
does not exist primarily to adorn life nor to give aes- 
thetic pleasure. It has a very useful function, and is 
to be studied as one studies the arts of carpentering, 
brick laying, book making and the other thousand use- 
ful arts. It is to be practiced just as they are prac- 
ticed. Consequently, a fair degree of skill is possi- 
ble to anyone of normal intelligence. Plain public 



16 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

speaking, such as we are to study here, does not re- 
quire inherited "genius". 

A Purpose Implied. Public speaking implies a pur- 
pose. It has an end to which it itself is but the means. 
One does not properly say, "Go to now, I will make 
a speech," unless it be at a banquet or some similar 
function where people are gathered to while away an 
hour and to escape from the serious business of life. 
What he properly says is : "I wish to raise five hun- 
dred dollars for the Y. M. C. A." or "I wish to help 
elect John Jones", or "I wish to explain the Nebular 
Hypothesis", or "I wish to make these people believe 
in a League of Nations". Then he makes a speech to 
reach the desired end. 

The musician, the poet, the painter or the sculptor 
practices quite a different activity. He has some- 
thing within that seeks expression, and he creates a 
beautiful song, poem, picture or statue to express this 
inner idea of perfection. As a rule he creates his 
work of art with no idea of its usefulness. He does 
not raise the question, "Of what use will this be?" 
Such a question is beside the point. If his work is 
beautiful, if it gives aesthetic pleasure, he is, and has 
a right to be, satisfied. It is not a part of his busi- 
ness to work out practical solutions of the world's 
problems. It is not a part of his business to conduct 
human affairs. His task is the expression of the 
beautiful. His work is, in a very real sense, the high- 
est adornment of life. It is its own excuse for being. 
It has no more connection with practical utility than 
a violet has. 

The public speaker, on the other hand, is concerned 



NATURE OF A SPEECH 17 

with practical solutions of problems; he is concerned 
with the conduct of human affairs. Consequently 
his art falls into the class of all arts that concern 
themselves with the problems of living, with the so- 
called practical problems. And if we liken the cre- 
ated beauty of the fine arts to the natural beauty of 
the violet, we may without apology liken the utili- 
tarian value of public speaking to the utilitarian value 
of the potato. And the potato is judged, not by the 
beauty of its foliage, but by the weight and quality of 
the food it produces. 

A young lady once wrote to the author, stating that 
she wished to give up her work as a stenographer and 
become an "orator" and asking what her prospects 
would be. When asked what ideas she wished to con- 
tribute to the world's betterment, she replied that she 
didn't have anything definite in mind but "just thought 
she would like to become an orator". The case is 
typical of many. Of course each prospective speaker 
must, as Mr. Russell Conwell points out, "speak his 
piece as a boy if he would become an orator as a 
man", but he who has no more definite purpose in 
view than "to become an orator" can never be one. He 
must have something to say. He must have a desire 
to accomplish specific things, to achieve definite re- 
sults. Then he uses the art of speech making to reach 
his goal, just as a carpenter uses his art to build a 
house. 

This distinction between fine and useful arts is a 
highly important one. It is necessary to understand, 
right at the outset, the nature of the study and prac- 
tice upon which we are entering. Otherwise we may 



1 8 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

go in the wrong direction, do much unnecessary and 
even undesirable work, set up false standards and in 
the end only find ourselves far on a road that leads 
nowhere. 

The Purpose of Public Speaking. What, then, 
is the purpose of public speaking, if it must have a 
utilitarian purpose ? It is simply this : to arouse 
in the audience ideas and thoughts, points of 
view, aims, aspirations and definite desires. The pur- 
pose may be simply to make something plain, as when 
a teacher demonstrates a problem in Physics; it may 
be to convince people of the truth of a proposition, as 
when one addresses an audience on the thesis that the 
Kaiser and his associates deliberately and wilfully 
planned and started the Great War; it may be to per- 
suade them to do something as when one speaks to 
raise money for the Red Cross ; but always, aside from 
banquet speeches and certain humorous lectures such 
as Burdettes' "Rise and Fall of the Mustache" whose 
end is entertainment, the purpose is to convey ideas, 
convictions or desires clearly and convincingly. If it 
is too much to hope that the audience will be con- 
verted, at least they will be favorably impressed and 
will go away thinking about what has been said. 

Methods and Rides. Keeping in mind the pur- 
pose what of the methods to be employed by the 
speaker? Clearly the method is less important than 
the result. One might almost say that the method 
may be anything so long as the proper result is at- 
tained. Who cares whether the cabinet maker uses 
the saw with his left hand or with his right so long 



NATURE OF A SPEECH 19 

as the bookcase is a good one and nicely put together ? 
Methods of speaking may and do vary greatly with 
different speakers with uniformly good results. No 
hard and fast method or set of rules can be laid down. 
For one no sooner ties up to an arbitrary method and 
says "thus you must do to be successful" than a 
speaker comes along who violates all the rules, takes 
the audience by storm, achieves his purpose glori- 
ously and leaves the rule maker wondering how he 
does it. 

The Only Safe Principle. There is just one safe 
principle: Use any methods or means that will help 
convey your message, and, so far as is humanly pos- 
sible, do nothing that calls attention away from the 
tli on ght. Any position, gesture, voice, or style of 
speech that aids in attaining the end is good ; and any 
one of these that calls attention to itself, and conse- 
quently away from the end of the speech, is bad. The 
reason is obvious ; the speech is not an end in itself, 
and so should not call attention to itself. It is a 
means to an end, and the attention of the listener 
should be directed to that end, first, last and all the 
time. Just so far as the attention of the audience is 
diverted to the odd gesture, peculiar attitude, or "dif- 
ferent" voice of the speaker, just that far the audi- 
ence cannot be attending to the business of the hour, 
the point that the speaker is trying to make. 

Methods, then, must be judged by their results, 
never by themselves. An effective method for one 
speaker may not be effective for another. What we 
want is results, let the method be what it may. In 



2o THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

succeeding chapters general principles that experience 
has shown are best adapted to achieve results will be 
discussed. It is necessary to say here only that the 
best method hides itself completely behind the content 
of the speech. 

Standards of Judgment. Finally, what are the 
standards by which we may judge the success of a de- 
livered speech? From what has gone before it must 
be plain that a speech can be judged only by its re- 
sults. It follows that some common standards do not 
properly apply. It is not proper to ask, for example, 
"Were the gestures graceful?" Graceful or not, the 
only pertinent question is this : "Did the gestures aid 
in driving home the message of the speech?" It is 
not proper to ask "Was the speaker's voice musical ?" 
That question might properly be asked concerning the 
singer. The only question here is "Did his voice reach 
everyone, and did it have that sympathetic and per- 
suasive quality that makes it easy for the audience to 
listen to the point presented ?" 

There is such a thing as too much gracefulness, too 
musical a quality, too artistic pose. These things may 
call attention to themselves. Many a person may be 
heard to remark, on the way home from a lecture, 
"What an impressive presence he had !" "What a won- 
derful voice !" "What graceful gestures !" Now these 
remarks are serious reflections on the speaker. He 
was not there to show his manly presence, his wonder- 
ful voice, his graceful gestures. This was no con- 
cert or opera. It was a speech. It had a definite 
purpose. If it had been successful the audience would 



NATURE OF A SPEECH 21 

never have remarked upon these tools of the trade. 
The carpenter does not leave his saw sticking in the 
staircase, however fine the saw. The audience should 
be talking of the speaker's ideas, not of his way of 
presenting them. 

There is probably no better way of judging a 
speech than to listen to the remarks made by the audi- 
ence after it is over. If they go away talking of the 
speaker's method, however complimentary their re- 
marks are intended to be, there is something wrong 
with the delivery of the speech. For a good speech 
conceals both method and speaker behind the mes- 
sage. If, on the other hand, some are convinced, 
others are driven to defend their old ideas, and all 
are discussing the points raised by the speaker, it was 
a good speech. It did what it was intended to do ; it 
conveyed ideas from speaker to audience clearly and 
effectively. It served its purpose as a useful art. 

Summary 

Public Speaking Is a Useful Art. It is distin- 
guished from the fine arts by the fact that it is defi- 
nitely accepted as a means to ends quite outside itself. 
Fine arts give us aesthetic pleasure and so are ends 
in themselves. They are their own excuse for be- 
ing. 

As a useful art, public speaking has in view a use- 
ful end. That end is to convey ideas, aspirations and 
desires from speaker to audience- 
There are no cut-and-dried rules and methods for 
the practice of the art of public speaking. There are 



22 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

underlying principles, to be discussed later, and there 
is one general principle which is a guide to the for- 
mulation of methods and rules that each must make for 
himself. "Use any method or means that will help 
convey your message, and, so jar as is humanly pos- 
sible, do nothing that calls attention away from the 
thought. 

Lastly, a speech must be judged, not by any or all 
of its formal qualities of delivery, such as voice, ges- 
ture, position, etc., but by the results achieved. If 
two speeches are made to the same audience under the 
same conditions, both for the purpose of raising money 
for the Red Cross, and if one speech nets one hun- 
dred dollars and the other nets two hundred, the 
second is twice as good a speech as the first, regard- 
less of any formal qualities of the two speeches. 



CHAPTER II 

FUNDAMENTAL QUALITIES OF DELIVERY 

While the methods of delivery may vary greatly 
with different speakers, there are certain underlying 
fundamental qualities of address on which all good 
speaking is, and must be, based. Certain characteris- 
tics every speech must have ; without them no method 
can make a speech successful; with them, almost any 
method will succeed reasonably. These fundamental 
qualities have been characteristic of all the great ora- 
tors from Demosthenes to Bryan; they were found in 
successful four-minute speeches for Liberty Loans; 
they are the universal necessities of successful speak- 
ing in all ages. 

Sense of Communication. The very first of these 
is what Professor Winans calls a "sense of commu- 
nication". It is a factor in what has long been known 
as conversational directness. The purpose of a speech, 
once more, is to communicate ideas. It is of the great- 
est importance that the speaker, at the very outset, 
get the idea firmly in mind that he is talking to peo- 
ple. This would seem to be too simple to dwell upon, 
but a little observation will make clear that the one 
thing that the student finds hardest is to get this atti- 
tude. He should rid himself of the idea, so false in 
its usual connotation, that he is "making a speech". 
He is not "making a speech", he is not repeating sen- 
tences before people, he is not talking at people. He is 



24 THE DBIIVBRY OF A SPEECH 

talking to people. He is communicating his ideas to 
them. It is a one sided conversation. 

This highly dominant note is struck in the very first 
sentence of Russell Conwell's "Acres of Diamonds". 
Mr. Conwell begins, "The title of this lecture origin- 
ated away back in 1869. I was going down the Tigris 
River — ". He is telling us something. The fact can 
be best understood by those who have heard Mr. Con- 
well. A very human sort of man, he begins to talk in 
a very human sort of way. At once we feel easy. We 
are listening to a man who is just relating some of 
his own experiences. He is not "orating", he is not 
"making a speech", he is just talking to us, much as 
as a favorite uncle might talk to us in the parlor upon 
his return from a long travel. He smiles, his eye 
kindles, his whole personality reaches out and takes us 
by the hand and establishes at once a close friendship. 
From the very start Mr. Conwell gets into communi- 
cation with us. And this is what people want and 
like. It is one of the reasons why Mr. Conwell has 
been able to give this lecture more than six thousand 
times and to make more than a million dollars with 
it. People do not willingly pay a million dollars for 
something they do not like. 

Of all places in the world, the platform is the last 
place for the impersonal attitude, the fishy eye, the 
colorless voice. Of all forms of conversation, that 
known as public speaking most demands the personal 
touch, the lively sense of mental contact with peo- 
ple. If the listless, colorless, dead-to-the-world person 
is a bore in the parlor, he is impossible on the plat- 
form. Personal contact, interest in the listeners, and 



FUNDAMENTALS OF DELIVERY 25 

a very strong sense of talking to them just as though 
they could talk back — these are the first essentials of 
a successful speech. 

When people go into a hall and sit down with oth- 
ers to hear a speech, they do not change their natures 
materially. An audience is only an aggregation of in- 
dividuals. It is true that there is a psychology of a 
crowd that is somewhat different from the psychology 
of the different individuals that make up the crowd, 
but in the main nothing may be said of the likes and 
dislikes of a crowd of people that may not be said of 
the individuals present. What the persons like the 
crowd likes also. If individually they like direct, 
staightforward, colorful conversation, they will like 
the same thing on the platform. It is necessary to re- 
member that the audience is made up of human be- 
ings, just common, everyday people, and when this is 
kept in mind the speaker is apt to be conversationally 
direct and to get and keep his sense of communication 
with them. For public speaking is nothing in the 
world but exalted conversation. 

In order to acquire this sense of communication, 
certain things must be kept in mind in practice as 
well as in the delivery of the speech. The speaker 
must think the thought as he goes along. It is not 
sufficient merely to say the words. The speaker's at- 
tention must be strongly focused on the ideas to be 
conveyed. If you find yourself mechanically repeat- 
ing words, stop and concentrate on the idea before 
going on. Never allow the mind to wander. If the 
thought is not vivid to the speaker it will not be vivid 
to the audience. To them, too, it will be just "words, 



26 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

words, words''. Do your very best with each sentence 
to renew the meaning to yourself. If Mr. Conwell can 
make his thought live again after six thousand repe- 
titions, surely the student can make it vital for the few 
times that he will speak it. And one of the most 
impressive things about Mr. Conwell's style is that he 
thinks every thought vividly, and gives it all the life 
and energy of a new idea. 

In order to do this, speak slowly. Do not hurry. 
Give yourself and your audience plenty of time to un- 
derstand and to appreciate the weight of each idea as 
it comes along. Group the words so as to bring out 
the meaning most clearly. Pause between these groups 
of words and think, and as the idea becomes vivid in 
the mind, make every effort to make it vivid in the 
spoken words. 

Feel the idea as well as think it. Get enthusiastic 
about it. Have it so much at heart that the desire 
arises to communicate it to others. Understanding, 
feeling and the desire to communicate are very essen- 
tial factors in common conversation. Of how much 
more importance are they in the exalted conversation 
of the platform. 

After thinking the idea clearly and feeling it 
strongly and after getting the desire to communicate 
it to others, make a conscious effort to adapt yourself 
to the audience. Try now to make them understand 
and feel the idea. Get forward toward them. Reach 
out after them. Project the voice to them. Avoid the 
subjective and the impersonal attitude, look and tone. 
Focus the eyes on the people in the audience and talk 
to them. Give them your idea as though you really 



FUNDAMENTALS OF DELIVERY 27 

wanted them to get it. Watch their faces and adapt 
yourself to them as in animated conversation. If they 
are not all listening, it is because you are not interest- 
ing enough. Use every art of conversation to 
reach them and to hold their attention and interest. It 
is only by thus taking a lively interest in conveying 
your idea that you can reach people effectively. 

Physical Vitality. After the sense of communica- 
tion, one of the most important qualities of a speaker 
is life, vigor, physical vitality and animation. People 
do not like a "dead one". To be a good speaker, one 
must first of all be a good animal. Strong and posi- 
tive tone and speech, forceful enunciation, strong po- 
sition and vigorous gesture count for much. Not all 
of us can be physical giants, and fortunately it is not 
necessary. There are "little giants". Successful 
speaking is hard physical work, and one who cannot 
generate enough vitality to work a little would do 
well to lay aside the idea of making speeches. 

Most students have the necessary health and 
strength to speak well. What most of them lack is a 
realization of the importance of using some of this 
strength. Common conversation requires little mus- 
cular exertion because the listener is close by and eas- 
ily reached. But when the audience is large and when 
many of them are seated at a distance the problem is 
different. Again, the platform speech deals presum- 
ably with important subjects. It is vital that the mes- 
sage "get across". If common conversation lan- 
guishes in interest, it is a simple matter to terminate 
it. It is not so simple in a speech. Here the interest 



28 THB DBUVBRY OF A SPEBCH 

must not lag. Furthermore, in common conversation 
ordinary politeness compels the listener to pay re- 
spectful attention even though the talk is lifeless. In 
the case of a speech there is not so much stress laid 
on politeness, and many a dull and lifeless speaker can 
testify that the great American public is apt to exer- 
cise its "rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of hap- 
piness" and leave the room if the speech does not 
measure up. And this is not a pleasant experience for 
the speaker. His is a kind of game, and he must learn 
to bring to it the same physical vitality, alertness and 
energy that he would bring to a good game of tennis. 

Walk to your place as one who is alive. Let the 
step be firm and purposeful. Let the face show life 
and interest. Beware the "mud face", the "fish eye". 
Many great speakers have not hesitated to check 
themselves up by the use of a mirror. And it cannot 
be too strongly urged upon the beginner that he take 
occasion often to thus "see himself as others see 
him". Practice until you can walk up to a mirror 
with a bearing and a face that expresses life and vi- 
tality. 

In beginning the speech, make every word clear 
and strong. Nine students out of ten talk only for 
those in the front row, and for those only half heart- 
edly. Remember that those in the "peanut row" have 
paid their money as well as those in the "bald-headed 
row". Remember that they wish just as much to 
hear, and that if they do not hear they will cause far 
more disturbance. 

In a word, dominate the whole situation from the 
start, by sheer force of physical vitality. People re- 



FUNDAMENTALS OF DELIVERY 29 

spect the strong and the purposeful. They ignore the 
weak and timid. Vitality characterized Theodore 
Roosevelt, and, as much as anything else, made him 
the great leader and speaker that he was. 

Enthusiasm. Closely allied to vitality is the third 
great quality, enthusiasm. One must bubble over. 
Get interested in the subject. The river never rises 
higher than its source, and the people in the audience 
are not going to get more enthusiastic over the sub- 
ject than the speaker himself. This should be remem- 
bered in practice. Always practice as to an audience 
and try to generate the same enthusiasm as for the 
final speech. As seen by the audience, this results in 
a kindling of the eye, a ring in the voice, life in the 
gesture and in the spoken words. The speeches of 
Jane Addams and Graham Taylor are good examples 
of what may be accomplished by enthusiasm. Newel 
Dwight Hillis is another example. In fact, to call the 
roll of successful speakers would be to give a list of 
enthusiasts. Extended discussion of this quality is 
hardly necessary because the value of enthusiasm is 
so well recognized in every activity of life. 

To physical vitality and enthusiasm one must of 
course add poise and control. This at first seems to 
run counter to the very nature of the qualities of which 
we have been thinking. But this is not so in real- 
ity. To acquire poise does not necessitate putting a 
damper on one's spirit or throwing a wet blanket over 
the fire of one's enthusiasm. It simply means that, 
with all one's force and enthusiasm, he must keep him- 
self always in hand. He must not "fry off the han- 



30 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

die". He must be master of himself. This implies 
holding power in reserve, so that however strongly he 
speaks the audience feels that he could speak much 
more strongly if he chose. A pug dog may have phys- 
ical vitality and enthusiasm, but he cannot make peo- 
ple take him seriously. He has no poise. He yaps. 
But a mastiff adds poise to his other virtues and com- 
mands respect. He barks to a purpose. It is neces- 
sary for the speaker to have himself in hand at all 
times. While he must glow with physical force, while 
he must bubble over with enthusiasm, he must also 
command respect by his poise and self-command. Mr. 
Bryan's dignified, yet forceful and enthusiastic ad- 
dress contrast pleasantly with the unpoised platform 
antics and run-away style of certain well-known evan- 
gelists in this country. 

Genuineness and Earnestness. Finally, in addi- 
tion to a sense of communication, vitality and well 
poised enthusiasm, the successful speaker must be 
genuine and earnest. He must believe what he says. 
The note that sounded so clearly in President Wil- 
son's War Speech before Congress was this note of 
genuineness and seriousness. And that speech will 
take its place among the greatest state utterances of 
all time. Confidence in one's self, belief and perfect 
faith in the truth as it is given one to see the truth, 
these are among the important qualities of a good 
speaker. Too often the speaker has been criticized as 
a time server, shallow, insincere and unworthy. But 
of such were not the ones who have been eminently 
successful and whose names have came down in his- 



FUNDAMENTALS OF DELIVERY 31 

tory as great orators. From Demosthenes down to our 
time the really great speakers have been sincere. Often 
they have been mistaken, as subsequent history has 
shown, but they stood for the right as they understood 
it. Webster's genuine and sincere belief in the con- 
stitution was a watchword. O'Connell's love for Ire- 
land was a passion. Hundreds of illustrations could be 
given. Many people think Mr. Bryan to have been 
in the wrong in his advocacy of free silver, but none 
who reads his "Cross of Gold" speech can doubt his 
sincerity. Shallow and insincere speakers there have 
been, but their names are not writ large in history. 

Now we cannot all attain to a senatorial defense of 
the Union, to a solemn declaration of war before 
Congress, to a nomination to the presidency, but the 
same qualities of earnestness and sincerity that have 
characterized these great history-making speeches are 
within reach of all, and they are as necessary in a 
speech to the school board as is one to Congress, as 
desirable in an address before the young people's so- 
ciety as before a meeting of thousands. We all ad- 
mire and love the genuine and the sincere person in 
conversation. We all abominate the twister, the per- 
son without convictions. And if sincerity and earn- 
estness are attractive and winning in common conver- 
sation, of how much greater import are they when 
the audience is increased to a hundred, to a thousand, 
to five thousand ! We approve when our speaker con- 
fesses that he has changed his mind after sufficient 
evidence has been given him, but we want him to stand 
sincerely for what he believes to be right until he is 
convinced of his error. St. Paul is a man for us. But 



32 THE DBLIVBRY OF A SPEECH 

as Saul, persecuting Christians, he was still admir- 
able. He acted according to this belief at all times. 
But genuineness and earnestness do not mean so- 
lemnity. It is not necessary to be funereal and long 
faced to be earnest. We all feel somewhat with In- 
gersoll that >4 'solemnity is a mask worn by hypoe- 
ricy". Or if we do not suspect the solemn person, at 
least he makes us uncomfortable. Many a pulpit ut- 
terance would improve a hundred percent by ridding 
itself of solemnity. {A sense of humor is one of the 
greatest assets to the speaker, and it is evidenced as 
much by the speaker's manner as by his words. A 
sense of humor is never inconsistent with serious- 
ness. A sense of humor is essentially a mark of men- 
tal balance, for it is in reality an appreciation of rel- 
ative values. That is perhaps why we suspect the 
solemn person. We suspect him of being without dis- 
crimination and a sense of the relative importance of 
things. And we wish our speaker to be highly sane. 

Summary 

To summarize, the fundamental qualities of a suc- 
cessful speech, without which no speech can succeed 
however formally good it may be in tone, pronuncia- 
tion, position and gesture, are : ( I ) a lively sense of 
communication, (2) physical vitality and vigor, (3) 
well poised enthusiasm, and (4) genuineness and earn- 
estness free from solemnity. With these qualities a 
speech will be reasonably successful even though the 
speaker may have a poor voice, awkward gestures and 
indifferent command of language. But it should al- 
ways be remembered that a speech, if successful, sue- 



FUNDAMENTALS OF DELIVERY 33 

ceeds by these qualities, not because of defects of 
voice, gesture and English. Students sometimes copy 
the mannerisms of successful speakers, under the mis- 
taken notion that these are the secret of their suc- 
cess. A man may occasionally get drunk, he may 
shave too infrequently, he may wear a dirty collar, 
and he may still be a reasonably successful man in 
business, but nobody is foolish enough to attribute his 
success to these unfortunate aspects of his life and 
conduct. He succeeds in spite of them, not because 
of them, and he succeeds because he has other and 
better qualities that outweigh his bad ones. So with 
the speaker. He may succeed with poor voice, poor 
gesture and poor English, but these are not the ele- 
ments of his success, and he would make a much 
greater success if he would eliminate the objectionable 
features of his delivery. It is to some of these de- 
fects and their eradication that we turn in the next 
chapter. 

Collateral Reading 

Exercises and Illustrations 

Houghton: Essentials of Public Speaking — 

Chapter II. 
Winans : Public Speaking — Chapter II. 
Woolbert : The Fundamentals of Speech — 

Chapters II and III. 



CHAPTER III 

FORMAL, QUALITIES OF DELIVERY — 
ACTION 

The fundamental qualities discussed in Chapter II 
are the essentials of a successful delivery. But a re- 
view of speeches that you have heard will reveal the 
fact that crudities of style often mar an otherwise 
splendid speech. For instance, an awkward appear- 
ance or a rasping voice, while they may not com- 
pletely spoil the effect of the speech, stand in the way 
of the greatest possible success. They may indeed go 
so far as completely to offset the sense of commu- 
nication, the vitality, the enthusiasm and the earnest- 
ness of the speaker. Of what avail are these funda- 
mental things if the audience cannot hear or cannot 
understand the speaker? Hence it is desirable that 
every speaker learn to recognize and cultivate the for- 
mal qualities of delivery, to the end that he may attain 
the highest degree of success of which he is capable. 

It has been insisted upon that no cut-and-dried 
rules are possible. It is not the purpose of the next 
two chapters to attempt to lay down such rules; the 
purpose is to indicate the more common faults of ac- 
tion and voice that interfere with success and to sug- 
gest ways of avoiding them, and to state a norm for 
delivery, from which individual variations may be 
made. In short, Chapters II and III are a develop- 
ment of the general principle laid down in Chapter I. 



FORMAL DBLIVBRY— ACTION 35 

And that principle is : Use any method or means that 
will help convey your message, and, so far as is hu- 
manly possible, do nothing that calls attention away 
from the thought. 

In applying this general principle, we may conven- 
iently consider the subject under two heads, action and 
voice. This division is based on the fact that all im- 
pressions that make or mar the delivery of the speech 
must come to us through one or both of two senses, 
sight and hearing. The first group of impressions, 
those that come to us through the sense of sight, we 
may discuss under the head of action. The second, 
those that come through the sense of hearing, we 
may consider under the head of voice. The present 
chapter is concerned with action. 

Four general sets of impressions come to us as we 
look at a speaker: standing position and general ap- 
pearance, facial expression, platform movements and 
gestures. If all these are good then the speaker's ac- 
tion is good, and there will be nothing in what the 
audience sees to detract from the success of the 
speech. 

Standing Position. What kind of a standing po- 
sition best furthers the end of the speech and least 
calls attention to itself ? Certain types of position will 
at once suggest themselves as bad; a slouchy posi- 
tion, a purposeless position, a stiff position, an awk- 
ward position. And by contrast one sees that there 
are certain qualities that a good position should pos- 
sess. 

A good position should have stability. Stability is 



36 THE DELIVERY OP A SPEECH 

largely a matter of the position of the feet. If the 
feet are placed tight together, the "base of the statue" 
is narrow and the speaker resembles a flag pole sway- 
ing in the wind. The feet should be separated enough 
to give what may be called lateral stability. So placed, 
the body may move somewhat from side to side and 
still not appear to "wabble" or to "reel". Of course 
there is a limit to the width of the position. If the 
feet are separated too far the body resembles a der- 
rick and attention is at once called to it. A little prac- 
tice before a mirror will give the desired result. The 
distance of separation cannot be measured in inches 
but the common sense and judgment of the speaker 
will easily decide the correct distance. But the body 
needs also forward-and-back stability. Hence one foot 
should be placed ahead of the other, so that the body 
may be moved toward and away from the audience 
without changing the position of the feet and without 
the appearance of staggering. It perhaps goes without 
saying that the toes should point outward somewhat. 
Both the parallel and the pigeon-toed position of the 
feet call attention to themselves. The precise angle 
cannot be measured as it may very properly vary con- 
siderably with different individuals, but again the mir- 
ror is helpful in judging what looks well. The weight 
of the body should be about equally distributed on both 
feet and about equally on heels and toes. If too much 
weight falls on the back foot, the chances are you are 
leaning back too far. If too much falls on the front 
foot, throw the hips back and equalize the weight. 
Now we have the foundation of a firm, businesslike, 
direct position, one that has stability and strength and 



FORMAL DELIVERY— ACTION 37 

consequently furthers the end of the speech by in- 
spiring confidence, by impressing the audience with a 
businesslike purpose. The listeners will now expect 
something worth while. 

A good position should also have symmetry and bal- 
ance. A line dropped vertically from a point midway 
between the eyes should divide the body equally all 
the way to the floor. In other words, the speaker 
should stand straight. He should not lean or lop to 
one side or the other. The hips should not be pushed 
out to left or right. The shoulders should be of the 
same height, not one up and the other sagging. The 
head should be poised in an upright position, not al- 
lowed to fall to one side. 

The position should have directness. By this is 
meant that the speaker should bend forward slightly 
toward the audience. This bending should be from 
the hips. Do not lean forward. By doing so the weight 
is all thrown on the front foot and on the ball of the 
foot, and still directness is not attained. But throw 
the hips back and incline the upper part of the body 
forward as one does in earnest conversation. The 
amount of this bending depends first upon the height 
of the platform, a high platform requiring more 
bending than a low one, and second on the relation of 
speaker to audience, moments of greater intimacy with 
the audience requiring more of the bending position. 
Face directly the part of the audience being addressed 
and keep the whole body that way as long as you are 
talking in that direction. When you address another 
part of the house, turn the whole body, not merely 



3 8 THE DEUVBRY OF A SPEECH 

the eyes or the head, toward the people you are talk- 
ing to. 

Lastly, the position should have ease and poise. 
Avoid stiffness, rigidity and artificiality. The requi- 
site ease can come only through long and patient 
practice. One who has never faced audiences cannot 
expect to acquire easiness and at-homeness in a day 
or a week. This is especially true if he has been ac- 
customed to stand poorly in everyday conversation. 
He will of course feel awkawrd and stiff in a good 
position. But by assuming a good position and by 
practicing every day he will in time acquire a feeling 
and an appearance of ease before people. 

Perhaps the greatest difficulty for the beginner is in 
knowing what to do with the hands. They appear to 
be always in the way and to be as prominent as 
bunches of bananas. For his encouragement it may 
be truthfully said that his hands feel much more awk- 
ward and prominent to him than they look to the audi- 
ence. Practice letting them hang naturally at the 
sides. They really look well there, though they may 
seem to the speaker to be very much in evidence. 
Practice will overcome this feeling. The hands may, 
by way of variety, be held behind the back but this 
position should not be held all the time. They may 
be held in front part of the time, one held loosely in 
the other, but in this position they should not be 
pressed tightly to the body as though the speaker has 
an attack of acute indigestion. In the case of men the 
hands may, not too often or for too long a time, be in 
the pockets. But care should be taken not to pull or 
derange the clothing. This is almost sure to happen 



FORMAL DELIVERY— ACTION 39 

when the hands are in the coat pockets. Perhaps the 
easiest way to manage is to hook the thumb lightly in 
the trousers pocket, leaving the rest of the hand hang- 
ing on the outside. In general, any position that is 
easy and does not call attention to itself unduly is 
proper. Free use of gesture, as outlined farther on, 
does much to solve the problem. 

It is impossible to insist too often or too strongly 
on practice before a mirror. Only by this practice 
can the proper position be cultivated and the crude 
positions be eliminated. A full length mirror is best, 
but in the absence of one an ordinary dresser mirror, 
tilted up or down as needful, will do very nicely. 

To repeat, then, a good position is one that has sta- 
bility, symmetry and balance, directness and easy 
poise. Such a position inspires people with confidence 
in the speaker and tends to inspire the speaker with 
confidence in himself. It is the first thing noticed by 
the audience, and, as first impressions are notoriously 
lasting, it is desirable that the position assumed will 
prejudice people in favor of, and not against, the 
speaker and his speech. 

Facial Expression. Acquiring good facial ex- 
pression is more a matter of acquiring freedom and 
at-homeness on the platform than anything else. The 
two requisites are friendliness and expressiveness. 

A smile, or at least a pleasant look, is always wel- 
come, on the platform or off. One should meet the 
audience pleasantly and in a friendly spirit. When one 
is introduced to people in the parlor, he does not 
look sour or glum or impersonal. He recognizes the 



4 o THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

fact that this kind of facial expression does not make 
for a good impression. One tries to show life and 
interest. On the platform this is even more impor- 
tant than in conversation, for more depends upon the 
impression made. Hence it is highly important that 
the facial expression be such as to win people, not 
antagonize them. This does not mean that one should 
cultivate an artificial smile or smirk. Here, more than 
anywhere else, one must 'be genuine. One must culti- 
vate a genuine interest in people and a genuine friend- 
liness for people. And the process of learning to ex- 
press these qualities in the face is largely a matter of 
removing the natural inhibitions to their expression. 
We must practice to get rid of these inhibitions, fear 
and self-consciousness, and with their passing will 
pass also the mask that obscures our real feelings of 
friendliness and good will. Certain things can be 
done to help in the process however. The eyes should 
be directed at the audience from the very first. If we 
cannot at first look as pleasant as we would wish, we 
can at least look at the audience. The eyes should not 
only be turned toward the audience, but they should 
be focused on people in the audience. The "far away 
look" comes into the eyes when they do not converge 
on some definite point in the audience but are directed 
in lines parallel to each other. This gives the face 
an unseeing expression, a subjective look, as though the 
speaker were not thinking of the people before him 
but of something a thousand miles away. Now the 
first element of friendliness and interest is to be think- 
ing of the audience and looking at them. Meet squarely 
the eyes of all the people present. Care should be 



FORMAL DELIVERY— ACTION 41 

taken not to shift the eyes too rapidly, as this 'breaks 
up the directness, but as the speech begins the speaker 
should talk to a part of the audience and look di- 
rectly at that part until a thought is completed. Then 
he may turn to another part, and so in turn he will ad- 
dress everybody at some time or other. Thus every- 
one gets the impression that the speaker is interested 
in him personally. 

But the face must also be' expressive of the speak- 
er's feeling for the things he is saying. Watch people 
in animated conversation. Their eyes kindle and spar- 
kle, their whole faces express the shades of emotion 
and feeling that color their reflections on the thought. 
And we like faces that are thus responsive. So far as 
speaking is concerned, faces are made to reveal 
thought, not to conceal it. The "poker face" may 
have its uses, but it is not for the platform. Nothing 
looks more incongrous than a face devoid of expres- 
sion in conversation. Again the thing that is neces- 
sary is to acquire freedom of expression. Little can 
be done in a positive way. Much of the artificiality 
of the old "elocution" was due to an attempt to "put 
on" a facial expression and a tone of voice to fit a 
stated emotion. If one feels the thought strongly and 
tries hard to free himself as fast as possible from the 
restraints of the platform, he will come gradually to 
lose the "mud face" and to let the features play their 
natural and important part in expression. 

Movement. Little need be said about platform 
movements, except perhaps to utter a warning or two. 
People like variety, and it is therefore well to avoid 



42 - THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

standing in any one position too long. Break up the 
position and take a new one occasionally. Do this as 
the thought changes. Rarely is it necessary or desir- 
able to walk directly across the platform. This takes 
the speaker away from direct contact with his audi- 
ence, and he should at all times be direct. But a speaker 
may move forward and back at will, coming forward 
to emphasize a thought and retreating a step or two 
as he begins a new thought. He may move from one 
side of a table or desk to the other side, standing di- 
rectly behind it part of the time. In short, he may 
make almost any movement that has some significance 
and does not call attention to itself. He should avoid 
side-stepping, "cutting over-toe" and "gum-shoeing" 
or "pussy-footing". If he would change positions, let 
him do it deliberately and freely, walking on heel and 
toe as usual. 

Gestures. Gestures are of two kinds, head and 
hand. If you will observe people in animated conver- 
sation you will discover that they all use head gestures 
continually. They nod and shake the head to empha- 
size the thought, and the more vigorous the thought 
the more frequent and vigorous the head gesture. If 
you would see how universal and necessary this is, 
get someone to repeat a few stirring lines of prose or 
poetry in a vigorous voice but with the head held per- 
fectly still. The effect is almost uncanny. Yet it is a 
very common thing to see beginners on the platform 
hold the head as though it were clamped in one po- 
sition. Get free from this unnatural rigidity by get- 
ting interested in the thought and by cultivating a de- 



FORMAL DBLIVBRY— ACTION 43 

sire to be understood and believed. There is no more 
natural means of emphasis than a nod of the head on 
the emphatic word or words. 

Turning to animated conversation again, it will also 
be found that most people use hand gestures. A lit- 
tle study of these gestures will reveal the fact that 
they are of three general types, index, open hand and 
fist. When trying to make a point more plain and un- 
derstandable, the one finger, or index gesture, is fre- 
quently used. In trying to get people to believe 
something or do something, the open hand gesture 
is oftenest employed. And in driving home a point 
with very strong conviction, or when uttering an 
extremely forceful statement, or in heated argument, 
the fist gesture is sometimes used. These hand move- 
ments are a very natural and spontaneous means of 
expression. They are a universal language. They 
help in making clear our meaning and in making im- 
pressive our thought and feeling. But they do some- 
thing more than this: they react on the speaker per- 
sonally and help him to clearer and more forceful ex- 
pression than he is capable of without them. One 
does not need to accept without reservation the well- 
known James-Lange theory of the emotions to admit 
that this latter contention is true. One has but to re- 
peat an emphatic phrase without and then with a 
strong gesture to be convinced that the gesture reacts 
in such a way as to make the vocal emphasis stronger 
and the feeling of the speaker keener. 

Students frequently ask if they positively must ges- 
ture with the hands. The answer is that of course it is 
not positively necessary, but if gestures help to make 



44 THB DBUVBRY OP A SPBBCH 

common conversation more effective it is certainly 
fair to assume that they will be a great asset in the 
more vigorous and important conversation of the plat- 
form. It is a mistake for any speaker to deny him- 
self any legitimate means v of effectiveness. Try see- 
ing if you can get through a day without using ges- 
tures in animated conversation, and then answer the 
question according to experience. 

Taking the three types of gestures as the natural 
hand language, what changes are necessary to fit them 
for platform use? When one remembers that the- 
platform speech is somewhat more finished and formal 
than ordinary conversation, he will readily under- 
stand why some gestures that are never noticed in 
common talk call attention to themselves on the plat- 
form. They are too informal. The only change nec- 
essary to fit them for public speech is to formalize 
them sufficiently so that they may be appropriate to 
the occasion. Just as we use more dignified and bet- 
ter language on the platform, just as we wear better 
and more formal clothes, just so we try to use better 
gestures than in common speech. These better ges- 
tures are not different in kind, they differ only in dig- 
nity and formality, just as our clothes are not differ- 
ent in kind but only in quality and formal cut. 

To be most effective most gestures should be made 
within an angle of 90 degrees of the speaker. A few 
gestures may be made at the side, but too many call 
attention to themselves and detract from the direct- 
ness of the speech. They should also, for the most 
part, be made well below the line of vision — that is, 
below a line drawn from the speaker's eye to the eyes 



FORMAL DELIVERY— ACTION 45 

of those to whom he is talking. The reason for this 
is that when a gesture crosses the line of vision it is 
very apt to attract the listener's attention. Of course 
the gestures should not be made too low. In general 
they should be directly between the speaker and the 
part of the audience he is addressing. This is espe- 
cially true of the index gesture. 

The index gesture is best made by drawing all the 
fingers, except the first, into the palm of the hand and 
binding them in loosely with the thumb. The hand 
should be held with the index finger on top, not 
turned to one side or the other. The finger is held in 
the direction of the people addressed, but it should be 
tilted up so as to avoid the appearance of pointing at 
them. And it should be made almost directly under 
the line of vision, so that the speaker faces, talks and 
gestures to a single place. 

The open hand gesture is to be made as naturally 
as possible. Bring up the hand from the side, palm 
up, in its original position. The fingers are now 
curled somewhat, the little finger the most and the 
others less as you approach the index finger which is 
nearest straight. The thumb is above the level of the 
hand. Now open the hand out, keeping the fingers in 
the same relative position, until the index finger is 
almost if not quite straight, the others bent more and 
more as you approach the little finger, but none of 
them curled. The thumb is still above the level of the 
hand. Now bend the wrist backward until the audi- 
ence can see into the palm of the hand. The fingers 
should be separated slightly. This gesture may be 
"supine" (back of the hand down), "prone" (palm 



4 6 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

down). When only one hand is used it should gen- 
erally be placed directly between speaker and audi- 
ence, though it may sometimes be at one side. When 
both hands are used in this gesture they should be bal- 
anced as to height and distance from center. 

The first gesture can be made from the open hand 
supine by simply drawing in all the fingers and bind- 
ing them in tightly with the thumb. The fist should 
look businesslike — it should be a fighting fist. As 
a rule, girls and women find it hard if not impossi- 
ble to use this gesture effectively. 

A variation of the open hand is sometimes used. 
One hand is held palm up and the other is brought 
down on it palm down. This gesture is usually made 
fairly close to the body and directly in front. The 
speaker thus talks directly over it. 

In making any gesture the hand should be brought 
up directly from the side, not in a roundabout course 
with elaborate curves. Do it just as simply and di- 
rectly as possible. Then make the "stroke" of the 
gesture on the word to be emphasized, letting the hand 
fall exactly on the accented syllable. Several words 
may be emphasized in succession, with short strokes 
of the forearm and hand, before the gesture is drop- 
ped. The stroke should terminate with a slight "whip" 
at the wrist, to avoid angularity and stiffness. Finally 
let the gesture fall directly to the side when through 
with it. 

Never watch the gesture yourself. This calls oth- 
ers' attention to it. Keep the eye on the audience, and 
they will not be conscious of the gesture. Practice be- 



FORMAL DELIVERY— ACTION 47 

fore a mirror is essential in acquiring gestures that 
will be effective and not noticable. 

Do not gesture too much or emphasize too many- 
words. Keep the gesture to* bring out the most im- 
portant ideas in the speech. One who is always us- 
ing a fist gesture, for instance, soon loses all the force 
of the gesture by its too frequent repetition. 

''Follow that impulse" is a fairly safe guide to ges- 
turing. If you get into the spirit of the speech suffi- 
ciently and have a genuine desire to communicate ef- 
fectively, you are almost certain to feel the impulse 
to gesture many times. Make gestures at such points 
and then practice them over and over again before a 
mirror, saying the phrase and emphasizing with the 
gesture until it becomes easy. The time will come 
when the gestures will be made as spontaneously as 
in common conversation and when the speaker will no 
longer need to be conscious of them. But the perfect 
fulfillment of this promise comes only after many days 
of faithful and persistent practice. 

Summary 

Under the general principle that the speaker should 
use any method or means that will help convey your 
message and, so far as is humanly possible, do noth- 
ing that calls attention away from the thought, there 
are two sets of impressions that need to be watched, 
and we are studying the first of these in this chapter 
under the head of Action. The next chapter will deal 
with the other division, Voice. 

Under the head of Action we have considered posi- 
tion, facial expression, movement and gestures. 



48 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

A good position is one that has stability, symmetry, 
directness and ease. It does not call attention to it- 
self. 

Good facial expression should display friendliness 
and expressiveness as regards the ideas spoken. The 
eyes should 'be direct. 

Movements should have variety and purposiveness. 
They should not be such as call attention to them- 
selves. 

Gestures are made with the head and with the 
hands. Head gestures are absolutely essential to ef- 
fective speech. They appear spontaneously when the 
speaker becomes interested in his ideas and in "get- 
ting them across" and when he gets over the first 
stages of self consciousness. Hand gestures are a 
universal language and add much to the»general ef- 
fect, both in their effect on the audience and in their 
reaction on the speaker. The index, open hand and 
fist gestures should be practiced until they come spon- 
taneously in formal fashion as they do in informal 
fashion in ordinary conversation. 

Collateral Reading 
Examples and Illustrations 

Fulton and Trueblood : Practical Elocution, or 
Essentials of Public Speaking, Part III. 

Woolbert : The Fundamentals of Speech, Chap- 
ters IV and V. 

Winans: Public Speaking, Chapters XV and 
XVI. 

Houghton : Essentials of Public Speaking, Chap- 
ters III and IV. 



CHAPTER IV 

FORMAL QUALITIES OF DELIVERY— VOICE 

From a consideration of the subject of Action in 
the last chapter we now turn to a study of the set of 
impressions that come through the sense of hearing, 
and these we may consider under the general heading 
of Voice. It is not the purpose of this chapter to en- 
ter into a scientific study of the elements of voice and 
speech production. It is a highly complex subject and 
involves the most intimate study of anatomy, physi- 
ology and psychology. Many books have been writ- 
ten on the general subject and on special phases of it. 
Much elaborate research is now going on in labora- 
tories all over the country to find the facts involved. 
The purpose of the present chapter is to indicate the 
common faults of tone and speech and the way to 
avoid them; to explain in non-technical terms the 
most elementary factors in this complicated field and 
to fit the average student who wishes to cultivate good 
clear style with the most common tools of speech. 

We may, for convenience of study and practice, 
make two divisions of the subject, tone and speech, 
corresponding to the two classes of voice defects that 
interfere with success in speaking. If one cannot be 
heard, it is a fault of tone; if he can be heard but 
cannot be understood, it is a fault of speech. There 
are many common defects in each division, of which 
those cited are examples. 



5 o THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

Tone. A little review of the subject of Physics 
will recall to mind that every tone has three charac- 
teristics: intensity, quality and pitch. Consequently 
any defects that interfere with good delivery, so far 
as tone is concerned, will fall under one or another 
of these heads. Let us consider them separately. 

The intensity of a tone, commonly referred to as 
its force, depends upon the amount of force used and 
the way in which that force is exerted. Everything 
else being equal, the amount of force used deter- 
mines the loudness of the tone; the way it is exerted 
determines the abruptness of the tone. And the faults 
of intensity are really faults of loudness and abrupt- 
ness. It goes without saying, perhaps, that the voice 
should be strong enough to carry to the farthest per- 
son in the audience, so that he may hear easily. The 
difficulty is that the average student, accustomed to 
the tones of his voice as used in ordinary conversa- 
tion, thinks he is talking loudly enough when he is 
reaching only those nearest to him. The speaker can- 
not be his own judge at first. He must accept the 
word of someone in the back of the room, either 
teacher or friend, or happily both, to tell him when he 
is being heard, and when not. In speaking in a good 
sized room, it is necessary to "turn on both lungs". 
Girls and women, particularly, are apt to fall into the 
habit of speaking with too little force. The sound of 
their own voices scares them, makes them think that 
they are "making too much noise", that they are be- 
ing "unladylike". It is necessary to get over this fear 
at the outset. A tone that might cause one to be ar- 
rested in common conversation may not be any too 



FORMAL DELIVERY— VOICE 51 

strong on the platform. One must be governed by cir- 
cumstances, by the size of the room and of the audi- 
ence, and by the presence of other conflicting sounds, 
such as electric fans, sputtering lighting systems, pass- 
ing street cars and automobiles. In fine, one must be 
heard, whatever the loudness necessary. And of course 
there is such a thing as being too loud. To bawl and 
shout, as some speakers do, is not conducive to the 
best results. It is necessary to use enough force to 
make oneself clearly and easily heard. But the more 
common fault among students is too little loudness 
rather than too much. 

But there is something else. The force may be suffi- 
cient and not too strong, but it may not be exerted in 
the right way. This is a matter of abruptness. Some 
speakers speak too abruptly, but most do not speak 
abruptly enough. Those who speak too abruptly bark 
out the words. They literally hurl them at us. Ordi- 
narily we do not like this. It gives the impression of 
dogmatism, of arbitrariness, of trying to drive the audi- 
ence. But people do not want to be driven. They want 
to be reasoned with, to be led. Consequently those 
who bark in delivery lose favor. Care should be taken 
not to explode the words too violently, but to send 
them forth with just the right amount of "punch". 
But the more common fault is too little abruptness. 
Students tend to run the words together and enunci- 
ate them too evenly. There is much to be said for a 
fairly abrupt style. Certain it is, more abruptness is 
needed in a platform speech than in common conver- 
sation. The audience is farther away and the words 
must be sent to them with much more vigor than when 



52 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

they are only a few feet distant. Again, someone be- 
side the speaker must judge. A teacher trained to 
notice these things, or someone else whose attention 
is especially drawn to it, can put the speaker right in 
this matter and insure sufficient, but not too much, 
abruptness. 

A second characteristic of all tone is quality. By 
this is meant the timbre of the tone, that which distin- 
guishes it from every other tone of the same pitch and 
force. It is what distinguishes a violin from a cor- 
net when both play the same note with equal force. 
Voices vary considerably in this matter, and very 
properly. It is not desirable that all have the same 
kind of tone. What is more pleasant than to distin- 
guish the voice of a friend among other voices? It 
is partly by quality that personality impresses itself. 

But there are some qualities that are unpleasant in 
any voice, and these are the ones to avoid in all speech. 
We call them "impure qualities". There are four of 
these. First there is the breathy voice. This comes 
from allowing too much air to escape as we speak. 
Every bit of air should be utilized in the making of a 
tone. A little practice will enable the speaker to de- 
tect this breathiness and to see how it interferes with 
effectiveness by covering up the tone, and by making 
the voice "fuzzy" and thus lessening its carrying 
power. Then there is the nasal voice. This is a mat- 
ter of placing the tone. Its effect is nearly always 
unpleasant. As soon as the ear can detect its presence 
the speaker should analyze his speech to see what 
sounds are most given to nasality. Now try enunci- 
ating words clearly, forming the sounds as near the 



FORMAL DELIVERY— VOICE 53 

front of the mouth as possible. Most people, who 
have nasal tones do not open the mouth enough in 
speaking. The jaw is apt to be held rigid and the 
words formed back in the head. The aid of another 
person is usually necessary in getting rid of the nasal 
quality, as the speaker cannot always sense the dif- 
ficulty. The third impurity is the throaty voice. In 
this the sounds are formed back in -the throat and are 
guttural and rough and harsh. Again an effort should 
be made to get the tone forward in the mouth. "Speak 
the speech — trippingly, on the tongue", as Hamlet ad- 
vises. This throaty, guttural quality has ruined many 
a good voice. It is a frequent cause of "speakers' 
sore throat". It often results from the effort to throw 
the voice to a distance in speaking. Be careful, in 
strong speaking, not to growl or let the tone be rasp- 
ing, for this quality not only ruins the voice but it is 
very unpleasant. The fourth impure quality is the 
hollow voice. This is a sepulchral tone, sometimes 
acquired in the effort to secure volume. It is "spooky". 
It is not open and free. It is frequently low in pitch. 
It is sometimes called the "false orotund", and by this 
is meant that it is frequently used where the orotund, 
or voluminous voice, is desired. The remedy is to 
speak in a natural pitch and in a free and easy, not 
a solemn tone. Breathiness, nasality, throatiness and 
hollowness, these are the common impurities in the 
speaking voice. Technically they are called the as- 
pirate, nasal, guttural and pectoral qualities. They 
are to be studiously avoided for the most part. 

The voice to be cultivated in their place may be 
called the normal Orotund. It is just like the voice 



54 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

of ordinary conversation except that it is larger, more 
space-filling, more voluminous. It is open and free. 
It is a pure tone. It is simply the ordinary pure voice 
made large. The good speaking voice fills up the aud- 
itorium, no matter how large. It is louder than the 
ordinary voice, but this is not all. It is larger as well 
as louder. A reed organ may sound well in the par- 
lor, but it takes a pipe organ to fill a vast church. And 
the difference between the two is not merely a mat- 
ter of loudness, it is a matter of richness and fullness 
of tone. Deep breathing is an essential of a big full 
voice. The normal orotund voice is the whole speaker 
made vocal. It is the voice that carries and fills com- 
fortably the hall. 

A good quality for the speaker, then, is one free 
from breathiness, nasality, throatiness and hollow- 
ness, and one that has a big, vibrant, space-filling 
power, which is yet free and easy. 

The third and last characteristic of tone is pitch. 
And here many faults may be found. They are of 
two kinds, those of degree and those of inflection. By 
degree is meant the general position on the musical 
scale, high or low. Perhaps the most common fault 
is that of too high pitch. It is natural for the pitch 
to run up in moments of excitement. And the bare 
excitement of making a speech is sufficient to send 
many voices up to an unpleasant degree. Care must 
be taken, when increasing the force of speech, not to 
raise the pitch unduly. Otherwise the voice runs to- 
ward a "screetch". It may even "break" with the 
strain of the high pitch. The pitch should be kept 
very near to the normal pitch of conversation; the 



FORMAL DELIVERY— VOICE 55 

added force and volume will get the desired result. 
Some few speak too low in pitch. The voice does not 
carry well and often rumbles and is not easy to hear. 
No definite statement of what constitutes a good pitch 
can be made, since voices differ so much. But every- 
one knows when a voice gets "keyed-up" unpleas- 
antly or when it "rumbles". No great effort should 
be made to change radically the natural pitch of a 
speaker. A deep voice is somewhat better than a high 
one, but one who has a tenor voice should not try to 
imitate a bass, and a soprano should not try to speak 
like a contralto. Much better results will come of 
speaking in the voice that nature has given. This 
does not mean that one who "naturally" speaks in a 
high, strained, "keyed-up" voice should not try to get 
a better and more controlled tone. It simply means 
that the normal range of pitch should not be tampered 
with too much. Nervousness is often the cause of the 
"keyed-up" voice, and of course every effort should be 
made for the self control and poise that will bring the 
voice down to a normal degree of pitch. 

An Inflection is the sweep of the voice up or down 
in uttering a word or syllable. The only fundamen- 
tal difference between speech and song lies here. In 
song we hold one note, or degree of pitch, for a time, 
then we go to another and hold that. In speech we do 
not hold any one note but the voice rises and falls on 
every word. This rise or fall of voice is called an 
inflection. And this will suggest the first common 
fault in speech. It is the tendency to hold the voice 
on one note as in song. This gives rise to the "song 
notes" once so common in speaking. The speaker 



5 6 THB DBUVBRY OF A SPEECH 

should never forget that he is speaking, not singing, 
and that every word should have its inflection as in 
regular conversation. There is no more reason for 
singing a speech than there is for singing a conversa- 
tion. 

The second, and perhaps greatest fault of inflec- 
tions, is monotony. There must be plenty of variety 
in the width of the inflections. In conversation some 
inflections are narrow and some are wide. We mix 
them up, giving to the emphatic words the wider in- 
flections. In platform speaking too often we fail to 
realize the importance of this and give to every sylla- 
ble about the same range. This makes for monotony. 

The third fault is in making the emphatic inflections 
too short. Practice may be had by picking out on a 
piano an easy range, as from middle C to the G above 
it, then singing the two notes, one after the other with 
a slur between. Repeat, making the notes shorter 
and keeping the slur. Shorten the notes until the 
change of pitch becomes a speech inflection. It will 
be an interval of a "fifth". Now speak several words 
with this interval. Repeat, going down instead of up. 
Now make the interval an octave, from middle C to 
the C above it, and carry out the exercise the same 
way as before. This will give some idea of the de- 
gree covered by a good full emphatic inflection. The 
unemphatic words of course take narrower inflec- 
tions. The importance of wide inflections can hardly 
be overestimated. This is perhaps the most common 
of all the means of emphasis, and emphasis is the 
means by which we convey thought. 

A fourth common fault is in using a rising or a fall- 



FORMAL DELIVERY— VOICE 57 

ing inflection when the opposite would convey the 
meaning better. It should be remembered that the ris- 
ing inflection expresses incompletion, hesitation, doubt, 
indecision, lack of finality, whereas the falling ex- 
presses completion, certainty, decision, finality. In a 
group of several terms, we commonly raise the voice 
on all but the last, showing that the series is incom- 
plete until the last is reached. One who speaks as 
though uncertain of his ground is apt to use the rising 
inflection. Of course a falling inflection is stronger 
than a rising, and consequently we use the falling in- 
flection when strong emphasis is desired, even though 
the incompleted thought would seem to require a ris- 
ing. Perhaps the best guide as to which inflection is 
best is our common sense. We use the proper in- 
flections in conversation for the most part, and if we 
stop and ask ourselves how we would say the phrase 
in question in earnest conversation, we shall not often 
go astray. Very few reliable rules can be given, and 
it is usually best to consider each case separately, but 
care should be taken to apply the test of common 
sense whenever there is doubt. One common fault 
of older days, now happily less common but still met 
with sometimes, is the "preacher's cadence". This is 
an upward inflection at the end of every sentence or 
clause. If the rule of common conversation is ap- 
plied, few mistakes will result. In fact it is well in 
practice to stop every once in a while and sit down, 
face a chair with an imaginary auditor in it and give 
the sentence as to someone in common conversation. 
When the conversational style has been found, sim- 
ply enlarge it somewhat for the speech, but be sure to 



58 THB DBUVBRY OF A SPBBCH 

keep the same inflections as before. Conversational 
directness consists more in keeping the natural inflec- 
tions than in almost anything else. 

Good tone production, then, is a matter of using 
the right amount of force with the right degree of 
abruptness, of getting a good, pure, full quality of 
tone, and of adjusting the pitch to a conversational 
level, taking care to use the requisite variety and 
width of speech inflections to bring out the thought 
and feeling. 

Speech, Having attained to a satisfactory tone, we 
must next look to the formation of our speech. The 
essentials of good speech are correct pronunciation^ 
proper timing and good emphasis. 

Good pronunciation consists of three things : cor- 
rect vowel quality, sharp articulation and proper ac- 
cent. The first and last of these are given for every 
word in any standard dictionary. Therefore we shall 
not here concern ourselves with them. It need only 
be said that every student of public speaking should 
get the dictionary habit and stick to it. There is no 
excuse for the mispronunciation of any English word 
in a platform speech. It takes but a moment to look 
it up, and failure to do so when in doubt puts the 
stigma of simple laziness on the speaker. If he does 
not know it already, the student should at once famil- 
iarize himself with the use of the Webster system of 
diacritical marks, which is the most common one in 
use, and which is used not only in the Webster but 
in the Standard dictionary also. These two are the 
best known popular reference works in the matter of 



FORMAL DELIVERY-VOICE 



59 



pronunciation and definition of words. The writer pre- 
fers the Standard as being the more liberal of the two, 
and the one that seems to give greater weight to usage 
in the middle west. 

A word regarding articulation is perhaps desirable. 
He who would be understood with ease must prac- 
tice in the use of the consonants. Articulation has to 
do with the consonants, and it is here that speech most 
often becomes mumbling and indistinct. Mere cor- 
rectness in the use of the consonants is not enough. 
Each consonant must be brought out with much 
greater distinctness on the platform than in common 
conversation. When the speaker is within three or 
four feet of his hearer, the hearer can get much of 
the speech by lip reading. As a matter of fact we 
"listen with the eyes" a great deal in conversation. 
This is seen when you consider how much easier it is 
to understand when you and the speaker are face to 
face than it is when the speaker or yourself turns 
around. In a public speech, the audience is much 
farther away. Lip reading is increasingly difficult, 
and the attention to articulation must be much greater. 
It is not necessary to practice ''tongue twisters" of the 
"Peter Piper and his pickled peppers" variety. What 
is necessary is that we practice the common combi- 
nations so thoroughly that they will be perfectly dis- 
tinct. There are few things more annoying than to 
attend a speech and not be able to understand the 
words because of imperfect, slipshod articulation. 
Practice holding the consonants harder and releasing 
them more quickly. Find the sounds that give you the 
most trouble and practice on them separately. Make 



60 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

combinations containing a difficult sound, placing it 
now first, now last, now in the middle of words. Prac- 
tice until the "b", "d", "t" and "p" sounds are per- 
fectly distinct, so that one could not possibly be mis- 
taken for another. Do this with other sets of simi- 
lar sounds. Perhaps one of the best exercises is whis- 
pering. See how far you can make yourself under- 
stood in a whisper. Two can work together well on 
this, backing away from each other and whispering 
alternately, each checking up on the other. E. H. 
Sothern can send a stage whisper to the back of the 
gallery and be perfectly understood. 

In trying to cultivate a clear and distinct articula- 
tion care should be taken not to make the speech 
stilted. It is possible to overdo the matter. This us- 
ually happens when words are unduly separated. In 
ordinary talk we run words together, we do not cut 
them absolutely apart. This should be done in platform 
speaking also. But running words together and mum- 
bling them are two very different things. One does not 
need to say "The — title — of — this — lecture — originated 
— away — back — in — eighteen — sixty — nine". Say the 
words as in common conversation and avoid the stilted 
style. But say them more clearly and distinctly than 
in common conversation and be plain. Don't say "The 
tita love thi slecture originate dway backin 1869". 
There is a happy medium between the stilted and the 
slipshod styles. 

Time. In considering the subject of timing as re- 
lated to speech, we may consider it under the heads 
of rate and grouping. Rate has to do with the rapidity 



FORMAL DELIVERY— VOICE 61 

with which the syllables and words are spoken. There 
are two extremes to be guarded against, too fast and 
too slow rate, and of these the former is by far the 
more common. There is a strong tendency with be- 
ginners to hurry. The words come tumbling out so 
fast that the audience can get no time to think of what 
is being said, and sometimes they cannot even follow 
the speaker. There are two ways of correcting this. 
In the first place, the syllables and words can be 
spoken more slowly. In rapid rate the words are 
snapped out, jerked out, spit out — any way to get 
them out in a hurry. Practice saying the words more 
slowly. Isolate a sentence or a phrase and say it over 
and over again, more and more slowly until each 
word has its appropriate time. Have someone lis- 
ten and judge as to the proper time. In the second 
place, more time can be spent in pauses between words 
and groups. Not one speaker in a hundred pauses 
often enough or long enough. It takes time for an 
idea to sink in. Give the audience time to digest a 
thought before going on to the next one. Remember, 
it is not the speaker who says the most words in a 
minute that makes the greatest success. It is the one 
that makes the audience think the most that gets re- 
sults. A thought is not "put over" until the audience 
has digested it, run it through the process of their 
own minds, made it their own. And they cannot do 
this if the speaker is firing away at them all the time, 
giving them no rest. It does not take very long to 
digest a thought if the attention is active, but it does 
take some time, a quite perceptible time, and this time 
is given them during the pauses. No one can say 



62 THE DBLIVBRY OF A SPEECH 

what is a proper rate, because some speakers speak 
much faster than others, but if you are going more 
than about 125 words a minute the chances are you 
are going too fast. Time a paragraph and determine 
the rate. Then slow it down until you are sure it is 
slow enough, taking more time to say the words and 
pausing long enough to convey the meaning. A 
strong sense of communication helps very materially, 
because when you think of getting the ideas over to 
people you naturally pause more to let them sink in. 
And this is of the utmost importance in speaking. 

Grouping has to do with the arrangement of words 
in groups for the purpose of bringing out the mean- 
ing more clearly. The groups are separated by 
pauses longer than those within the group. Words 
that belong together should be grouped together. The 
most important means of securing good grouping is, 
again, to think the thought vividly and try hard to 
make it clear to others. Bad grouping is usually the 
result of bad or weak thinking. Punctuation is not 
a safe guide to grouping. The only guide is the sense 
of the sentence. Try it this way and that way to bring 
out its full and exact meaning, always remembering 
that the thought is new to the audience, even though 
it may be familiar to you, and remembering that your 
chief business as a speaker is to make the thought 
clear and impressive to others. It is a mistake to view 
either rate or grouping as ends in themselves or as 
problems to be settled without reference to the mean- 
ing involved and without regard to the necessity of 
getting the ideas clear for the audience. 



FORMAL DELIVERY— VOICE 63 

Emphasis. Lastly we come to the subject of em- 
phasis, in many respects the most important thing in 
public speaking. Emphasis is the process of making 
certain words or groups of words more prominent 
than the rest, in order to bring out the meaning. It 
is a common fact of psychology that attention cannot 
be held steadily on anything for any great length of 
time. Bearing this fact in mind, remembering that at- 
tention jumps from one thing to another, it is im- 
portant that certain words that bear the weight of the 
meaning should stand out in such a way that they will 
catch the attention of the audience. By emphasis the 
speaker says to the audience in effect, "You cannot 
get every word I shall say; your attention will not 
allow you to ; but if you will get these few words that 
I am making more prominent than the rest, you will 
get the meaning of my sentence." So he emphasizes 
the most important things, making them stronger as 
they are more important. The importance of a good 
emphasis cannot be overstated. How may it be ob- 
tained ? 

In the first place, again, one must think clearly and 
vividly. If a real serious effort is made to bring out 
the meaning, the greatest step has been taken. It is 
necessary to keep before the mind every moment the 
importance of making the meaning clear to others. 

There are many mechanical means of emphasis, 
some of which have already been mentioned. There 
is the head gesture, the nod on the emphatic word. 
There is the hand gesture, calling attention to an im- 
portant idea. There is the emphasis of force, whereby 
a word is made louder or much less loud than its 



64 THB DBUVBRY OF A SPBBCH 

neighbors. Sometimes to whisper a word makes it 
very emphatic. There is the emphasis gained by pro- 
nouncing a word very abruptly. There is an emphasis 
attained by pitch, and perhaps this is the most common 
and most subtle. By making a word higher or lower 
than the rest, it hecomes emphatic. By giving it a 
strong falling inflection it becomes emphatic, and the 
wider the inflection the stronger the emphasis. There 
is an emphasis of time, gained by speaking a word 
faster or slower than other words. Emphasis is put 
on a word by pausing just before it or just after it, 
or both before and after. In a word, any action that 
makes a word different from its neighbors makes it 
emphatic. 

It is a good exercise in emphasis to go through a 
sentence and pick out the words which, if pronounced 
alone, the other words left out, will give the sense of 
the sentence. These will be the emphatic words in 
speaking. But in applying any given physical means 
of emphasis, it must not be forgotten that the indis- 
pensable thing is to think the thought and to try to im- 
part it to others. This is, after all, the secret of gain- 
ing good emphasis. 

Summary 

The formal qualities of vocal delivery reside in tone 
and speech. A good tone must be loud enough to be 
heard easily. It must be free from the impurities of 
breathiness, nasality, throatiness and hollowness, and 
it must have fullness and volume. It must be good 
conversational tone made large. It must have the 
conversational degree of pitch, neither so high as to 



FORMAL DELIVERY- VOICE 65 

be "keyed-up" nor so low as to rumble. It must have 
speech inflections that are varied and not monoton- 
ous, and that have sufficient width for good emphasis. 
It must, in a word, be pleasant, forceful and varied. 
Good speech consists in accurate and clear pronun- 
ciation, which implies correct vowel quality, sharp 
articulation and proper accent; in good timing, which 
implies a rate that is slow enough that the audience 
can follow every thought presented, and a manner of 
grouping that brings out the relationships of the 
words; and in strong and forceful emphasis which 
holds the attention on the most important ideas pre- 
sented. 

Collateral Reading 

Exercises and Illustrations 

Fulton and Trueblood : Practical Elocution or 
Essentials of Public Speaking. Chapters on 
Quality, Force, Pitch and Time. 

Houghton : Essentials of Public Speaking, Chap- 
ters V to XII inclusive. 

Winans: Public Speaking, Chapters XIII and 
XVII. 

Woolbertr The Fundamentals of Speech, Chap- 
ters VI to X inclusive. 



A STANDARD FOR THE COURSE 

i. Have you acquired a "sense of communication" ? 

2. Do you put into your delivery sufficient physical 
vitality ? 

3. As you speak, do you interest people by your own 
enthusiasm? 

4. Are you, in your speaking, genuine and earnest? 

5. Have you acquired poise and self control? 

6. Have you freed yourself from solemnity? 

7. Is your position stable and strong, symmetrical, 
direct, well poised and easy? Does it contribute 
to the success of your speech by not calling at- 
tention to itself ? 

8. Is your facial expression friendly and expressive 
of your thought and feeling? 

9. Are your platform movements purposeful and 
free? 

10. Do you use head gestures as freely as in con- 
versation? Do you use the three types of hand- 
gesture spontaneously as in common conversa- 
tion, yet formally enough not to call attention to 
them? 

11. Is your tone loud enough to be heard easily? Is 
it of good full normal orotund quality, free from 
breathiness, nasality, throatiness and hollowness? 
It is of conversational pitch, not too high nor too 
low, and are your inflections free from song 



A STANDARD FOR THE COURSE 67 

notes, are they varied, strong and emphatic? Do 
you use the rising and falling inflections as in 
conversation? 

12. Do you use, in speaking, correct pronunciation, 
with correct vowel qualities, consonant qualities 
and accent according to the best usage? Is your 
articulation sharp enough so that you can be per- 
fectly understood all over a large hall, and yet not 
stilted? Do you speak slowly enough so all can 
follow you and think with you? Do you group 
your words so as to bring out the meaning most 
clearly? Is your emphasis strong and forceful 
enough not only to make your meaning clear but 
to make your speech impressive? 

It is to be noted that in the above standard the em- 
phasis is put, not primarily on what you know but on 
what you can do. It is, of course, necessary to under- 
stand all these things, but the test comes in the do- 
ing. When the above questions can all be answered 
"yes", when you have acquired the ability to speak in 
accordance with the above standard, not only in com- 
mitted selections but also in your extemporaneous ef- 
forts, the fundamental work in public speaking has 
been accomplished. Attention may now. be turned to 
the other technical things of speech construction, gath- 
ering material, briefing, and the other elements that 
enter into a good speech from the point of view of 
effectiveness. These things are the concern of suc- 
ceeding courses. The work of the elementary course 
is the work of attaining to the above standard of de- 
livery. 



SCHEDULE OF SPEECHES FOR THE COURSE 

The succeeding pages contain speeches for class 
practice. The lectures are divided into class assign- 
ments which are numbered in paragraph indenta- 
tions. These numbers correspond to class numbers of 
students. Hence, as soon as class numbers are given 
out, the speeches that are to be memorized for the se- 
mester's work may be known. The following speech 
schedule gives alternate committed and extemporan- 
eous speech assignments. The object is to use the 
committed speeches to work out the more formal 
principles of delivery, and then to apply these prin- 
ciples in the extemporaneous speeches. Care should 
be taken to use every principle learned in every 
speech. Do not "let down" when making an extem- 
poraneous speech, but use gestures and all other means 
of effectiveness. Dates on which the assignments are 
due will be given out each semester as soon as the 
class is fully organized. 

i. Committed. "Acres of Diamonds". 

2. Extemporaneous. Give in your own words, as 
directly and as interestingly as you can, an ex- 
ample of the idea underlying Mr. ConwelPs lec- 
ture. Tell how somebody whom you have known 
or of whom you have heard has made a success 
by taking the opportunity that lay at home. Make 
the example like Mr. Conwell's examples in nar- 
rative style and interestingness. Two Minutes. 



SCHEDULE OF SPEECHES 69 

3. Committed. "The Liberty of Man, Woman and 
Child". 

4. Extemporaneous. Give your own personal opin- 
ion of any of the ideas in Mr. Ingersoll's lec- 
ture. Be perfectly free to say just what you 
think, whether it be favorable or unfavorable to 
the lecture. Put physical vitality, enthusiasm and 
seriousness into your talk. Try hard to con- 
vince the class of the truth of your position. Not 
over three minutes. 

5. Committed. "The Prince of Peace". 

6. Give your own ideas on the subject of Evolution 
and its relation to religion. Or tell us what you 
think the office of religion is. What do you 
think of the modern church and its mission? 
Strive to convince the class. Three Minutes. 

7. Committed. "Sour Grapes". 

8. Extemporaneous. Give an example, without 
names if the example is from your own personal 
observation, using names if some historic per- 
son is used, of the influence of heredity. Or cite 
illustrations that seem to show that environment 
is stronger than heredity in achieving success. 
Three minutes. 

9. Committed. "The Race Problem in the South" 
and "The New South". 

10. Give your own ideas as to the solution of the 
race problem in the United States. Three Min- 
utes. 



?o TMM DHLIVHRY OP A SPBBCH 

ii. Committed. "The Rise and Fall of the Mus- 
tache". 

12. Make a five minute speech suitable for a banquet 
program, the object of which will be to entertain 
the audience. Use humorous stories if you like. 
Or tell of something that you have seen or heard 
that would interest people. Give it a humorous 
turn preferably. See how well you can entertain 
the class. 



SUGGESTIONS FOR MEMORIZING- > 

i. Read the entire class assignment first. Thus you 
will understand the whole lecture of which yours is 
a part and can make your contribution intelligently. 

2. Begin memorizing at once and spread the work 
over as long a time as possible. Delay in starting the 
memorizing is fatal. 

3. Memorize your speech as a whole, never sentence 
by sentence. Memory is a matter of association, and 
the last word of every sentence should suggest the 
first word of the next sentence. If you repeat one 
sentence over and over again, an association will be 
formed between the last word of the sentence and first 
word of the same sentence, and you tend to repeat in 
speaking. Hence read your speech straight through 
before stopping, every time. 

4. Read or repeat the speech out loud. Auditory 
and kinesthetic sensations are more valuable than vis- 
ual in memorizing speeches. 

5. Read or repeat it thoughtfully. Think every 
thought intensely. Make it live again as you say it. 
If you find your mind wandering, start again and hold 
your attention to the speech. 

6. Try to feel the speech from the start. Get en- 
thusiastic about it and give it as though it were your 
own. 



72 THE DBLIVBRY OF A SPBBCH 

7. Always read or repeat as to an audience. Imag- 
ine yourself before the class or some other audience 
and try to interest them. 

8. Have the book in a convenient place and read 
the speech at several convenient times during the day. 
Do not spend more than a few minutes on it at a 
time. But do it several times. Read it the last thing 
before you go to bed. 

9. As the speech becomes familiar repeat as much as 
possible without looking at the book. Get free from 
the book as soon as possible. Then practice vigor- 
ously, using gestures and all other means of effective- 
ness. Finally, if a few places "stick", work intensively 
on them until they are "ironed out" and the speech 
comes freely. 

10. But at all costs, have the speech word perfect. 
This is of the very first importance. The value of the 
class exercise will depend on this. Failure to mem- 
orize thoroughly is the one unpardonable sin. Don't 
get the notion that it is hard for you to memorize, or 
that your memory is different from others'. Memories 
do differ in the rapidity of their action, but any per- 
son of normal intelligence can memorize these 
speeches perfectly if time and effort is spent freely 
enough. Speeches must be perfectly memorized and 
ready on time. No excuse whatever is accepted. 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 

By RusstEXi, H. Conweix 

Russell H. Conwell was born February 15, 1843, in the 
Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts. After a year at 
Yale College he enlisted in the Northern armies and fought 
in the civil war. He was wounded and left for dead in the 
battle of Kenesaw Mountain, but recovered after a long ill- 
ness. He studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1865. 
He then engaged in journalistic work for several years, in 
which he met many of the prominent men and women of 
the world. During this time he was gradually working up 
a good law practice and real estate business. Finally his 
interest in the ministry drew him away from his chosen pro- 
fession, and he entered upon what has proved to be his real 
life work. From Boston he moved to Philadelphia. Here 
he allied himself with a struggling congregation, so deeply 
in debt for its church that the situation looked hopeless. 
From this unpromising beginning he has built the Baptist 
Temple, the auditorium of which seats between three and 
four, thousand people. It is a fully equipped, modern church, 
taking care of the physical, social, and spiritual needs of 
thousands. In connection with this church has grown up 
Temple University, of which Dr. Conwell is president. Nearly 
100,000 students have attended it since its founding. 

"Acres of Diamonds" has been the most successful of Dr. 
Conwell's lectures. It has been delivered all over the world. 
At present it numbers over 6,000 repetitions. It has been 
estimated that Dr. Conwell has spoken to more than ten 
million people in the course of his life-long career of lec- 
turing. The income from this lecture, aggregating more than 
a million dollars, has all been used to give a college education 
to poor but deserving young men. About 10,000 men have 
been helped by Dr. Conwell in this way. 



74 THE DHUVBRY OP A SPBBCH 

For directness, force and clearness of style, for concrete- 
ness and aptness of example, this lecture has never been sur- 
passed in the history of popular lectures. 

For a full account of Dr. Conwell's life and work, the 
reader is referred to the book, "Russell Conwell and His 
Work," by Agnes Rush Burr, published by the John C. Win- 
ston Company, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Dr. Conwell has 
very graciously given his permission to reprint the lecture 
that follows. 

I. Ladies and Gentx#m£n : — The title of this 
lecture originated away back in 1869. I was going 
down the Tigris River, and we had hired a guide from 
Bagdad to show us down to the Arabian Gulf. That 
guide whom we employed resembled the barbers we 
find in America. That is, he resembled them in cer- 
tain mental characteristics. He thought it not only 
his duty to guide us down the river, but also to en- 
tertain us with stories; curious and wierd, ancient 
and modern, strange and familiar; many of them I 
have forgotten, and I am glad I have. But there was 
one which I recall tonight. The guide grew irritable 
over my lack of appreciation, and as he led my camel 
by the halter, he introduced his story by saying : "This 
is a tale I reserve for my particular friends." So I then 
gave him my close attention. He told me that there 
once lived near the shore of the River Indus, toward 
which we were then travelling, an ancient Persian by 
the name of Al Hafed. He said that Al Hafed owned 
a farm, with orchards, grain fields and gardens, that 
he had money at interest, had a beautiful wife and 
lovely children, and was a contented and happy man. 
Contented because he was wealthy, and wealthy be- 
cause he was contented. 



ACRES OP DIAMONDS 75 

One day there visited this old Persian farmer one of 
those ancient Buddhist priests, one of the wise men of 
the East, who sat down by Al Hafed's fireside and 
told the old farmer how this world was made. He 
told him that the world was once a great bank of 
fog, and the Almighty thrust his finger into this 
bank of fog, and began slowly to move his finger 
around, and then increased the speed of his finger un- 
til he whirled this bank of fog into a solid bank of 
fire; and as it went rolling through the Universe 
burning its way through other banks of fog, it con- 
densed the moisture until it fell in floods of rain on 
the heated surface of the world, and cooled the out- 
ward crust. Then the internal fires, bursting the cool- 
ing crust, threw up the mountains and the hills, and 
the valleys of this wonderful world of ours. 

"And," said the old priest, "if this internal melted 
mass burst forth and cooled very quickly it became 
granite; if it cooled more slowly it became copper, 
if it cooled less quickly, silver, less quickly, gold, and 
after gold, diamonds were made." Said the old 
priest, "A diamond is a congealed drop of sunlight." 
That statement is literally true. 

2. And the old priest said another very curious 
thing. He said that a diamond was the last and the 
highest of God's mineral creations, as a woman is the 
last and highest of God's animal creations. That is 
the reason, I suppose, why the two have such a lik- 
ing for each other. 

The old priest told Al Hafed if he had a diamond 
the size of his thumb he could purchase a dozen farms 
like his. "And," said the priest, "if you had a handful 



76 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

of diamonds you could purchase the county, and if 
you had a mine of diamonds you could purchase king- 
doms and place your children upon thrones through 
the influence of your great wealth." 

Al Hafed heard all about diamonds that night and 
went to bed a poor man. He wanted a whole mine 
of diamonds. Early in the morning he sought the 
priest and awoke him. Al Hafed said, "Will you tell 
me where I can find diamonds?" 

The priest said "Diamonds, what do you want of 
diamonds ?" 

Said Al Hafed, "I want to be immensely rich." 

"Well," said the priest, "if you want diamonds, all 
you have to do is to go and find them, and then you 
will have them." 

"But," said Al Hafed, "I don't know where to go." 

"If you will find a river that runs over white sands 
between high mountains, in those white sands you will 
always find diamonds," said the priest. 

"But," asked Al Hafed, "Do you believe there is 
such a river?" 

"Plenty of them; all you have to do is just go where 
they are." 

"Well," said Al Hafed, "I will go." 

So he sold his farm, collected his money that was at 
interest, left his family in charge of a neighbor, and 
away he went in search of diamonds. He began his 
search very properly, to my mind, at the Mountains 
of the Moon. Afterwards he came around into Pal- 
estine, and then wandered on into Europe. At last 
when his money was all gone and he was in rags, pov- 
erty and wretchedness, he stood at the shore in Barce- 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 77 

lona in Spain, when a great tidal wave swept through 
the Pillars of Hercules. And the poor, starving, af- 
flicted stranger could not resist the temptation to cast 
himself into that incoming tide, and he sank beneath 
its foaming crest never to rise again in this life. 

3. The man who purchased Al Hafed's farm led 
his camel out into the garden to drink, and as the 
animal put his nose into the shallow waters of the gar- 
den brook Al Hafed's successor noted a curious flash 
of light from the white sands of the stream. Reach- 
ing in, he pulled out a large black stone containing a 
strange eye of light. He took it into the house as a 
curious pebble and putting it on the mantle that cov- 
ered the central fire went his way and forgot all about 
it. But not long after, that same old priest came to 
visit Al Hafed's successor. The moment he opened 
the door he noticed the flash of light. He rushed to 
the mantle and said: 

"Here is a diamond !" Here is a diamond ! Has Al 
Hafed returned?" 

"O no, Al Hafed has not returned, and we have 
not heard from him since he went away, and that is 
not a diamond. It is nothing but a stone we found 
out in our garden." 

"But," said the priest, "I know a diamond when I 
see it, and I tell you that is a diamond." Then to- 
gether they rushed out into the garden. They stirred 
up the white sands with their fingers, and there came 
up other more beautiful, more valuable gems than the 
•first. 

"Thus," said the guide, and, friends, it is histori- 
cally true, "were discovered the diamond mines of Gol- 



78 THE DBLIVBRY OF A SPEECH 

conda, the most valuable diamond mines in the his- 
tory of the ancient world." 

"Well, when the guide had added the second chap- 
ter to his story, he took off his Turkish red cap and 
swung it in the air to call my special attention to the 
moral ; those Arab guides always have morals to their 
stories, though the stories are not always moral. He 
said to me: 

"Had Al Hafed remained at home and dug in his 
own cellar or underneath his own wheat field, instead 
of wretchedness, starvation, poverty and death in a 
strange land, he would have had acres of diamonds. 

ACRES OF DIAMONDS ! For every acre of the 
old farm, yes, every shovelful, afterwards revealed the 
gems that have since decorated the crowns of mon- 
archs. 

When the old guide had added the moral to this 
story I saw why he reserved it for his particular 
friends. But I didn't tell him that I could see it. It 
was that mean old Arab's way of going around a 
thing, like a lawyer, and saying indirectly what he did- 
n't dare say directly, that in his private opinion there 
was a certain young man travelling down the Tigris 
River who might better be at home in America. 

4. Professor Agassiz, the great geologist of Har- 
vard University, that magnificent scholar, told at the 
Summer School of Mineralogy that there once lived 
in Pennsylvania a man who owned a farm. And he 
did with his farm just what I should do if I owned 
a farm in Pennsylvania: he sold it. But before he 
sold it he decided to secure employment collecting coal 
oil. He wrote to his cousin in Canada that he would 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 79 

like to go into that business. His cousin wrote back 
to him : "I cannot engage you because you do not un- 
derstand the oil business." "Then," said he, "I will 
understand it." And with commendable zeal he set 
himself at the study of the whole theory of the coal 
oil subject. He began away back at the second day 
of God's creation. He found that there was once an- 
other sun that shone on this world, and that then 
there were immense forests of vegetation. He found 
that the other sun was put out, and this world after 
a time fell into the wake of the present sun. It was 
then locked in blocks of ice. Then there rose mighty 
iceburgs that human imagination cannot grasp. And 
as those mountains of ice did ride those stormy seas 
they beat down the original vegetation, they planed 
down the hills, toppled over the mountains, and every- 
where buried this original vegetation which has since 
been turned, by chemical action, to the primitive beds 
of coal, in connection with which only is found coal 
oil in paying quantities. 

So he found out where oil originated, he studied it 
until he knew what it looked like, what it smelled like, 
how to refine it, and where to sell it. 

"Now," said he to his cousin in a letter, "I know 
all about the oil business." His cousin replied to him 
to come on. So he sold his farm in Pennsylvania for 
$833 — even money, no cents. 

After he had gone from the farm, the farmer who 
had purchased his place went out to arrange for wa- 
tering the cattle. And he found that the previous 
owner had already arranged for that matter. There 
was a stream running down the hillside back of the 



80 THE DBLIVBRY OF A SPEECH 

barn; and across that stream, from bank to bank, the 
previous owner had put in a plank edgewise at a 
slight angle for the purpose of throwing over to one 
side of the brook a dreadful looking scum through 
which the cattle would not put their noses, although 
they would drink on this side below the plank. Thus 
that man who had gone to Canada and who had studied 
all about the oil business had been himself damming 
back for twenty-three years a flood of coal oil which 
the state Geologist said, in 1870, was worth to our 
state a hundred millions of dollars. A hundred mil- 
lions ! The city of Titusville stands bodily on that 
farm now. And yet, though he knew all about the 
theory, he sold the farm for $833. Again I say, no 
sense! 

5. I need another illustration. I find it in Massa- 
chusetts. A young man went down to Yale College 
to study mines and mining. He became such an adept 
in mineralogy that during his senior year they paid 
him as a tutor fifteen dollars a week for the spare 
time in which he taught. When he graduated they 
raised his pay to forty-five dollars a week and offered 
him a professorship. As soon as they did that he went 
home to his mother. If they had raised his salary to 
fifteen dollars and sixty cents then he would have 
stayed. But when they made it forty-five dollars a 
week he said : "I won't work for forty-five dollars a 
week; the idea of a man with a brain like mine work- 
ing for forty-five dollars a week ! Let us go out to 
California and stake out gold and silver and copper 
claims and be rich." 



ACRES OP DIAMONDS 81 

Said his mother: "Now, Charlie, it is just as well 
to be happy as to be rich." 

"Yes," said he, "but it is just as well to be rich and 
happy, too." 

They were both right about it, and as he was the 
only son and she was a widow, of course he had his 
way. They always do. So they sold out in Massa- 
chusetts and went, not to California, but to Wiscon- 
sin. And there he entered the employ of the Supe- 
rior Copper Mining Co. at fifteen dollars a week 
again, but with the proviso that he should have an 
interest in any mines he should discover for the com- 
pany. I don't believe he ever discovered a mine there. 
But I do know that he had scarcely gone from Massa- 
chusetts before the farmer who had purchased his 
farm was bringing a large basket of potatoes in 
through the gateway. You know in Massachusetts 
our farms are almost entirely stone walls, and the 
farmers have to be very economical with their gate- 
ways in order to have some place to put the stones. 
Hence the basket hugged very close in the gate, and 
he dragged it on one side and then on the other; and 
as he was pulling that basket through the gateway the 
farmer noticed in the upper and outer corner of that 
stone wall next to the gate a block of native silver 
eight inches square. And this professor of mines and 
mining and mineralogy who would not work for for- 
ty-five dollars a week because he knew so much about 
the subject, when he sold that homestead sat on that 
very stone to make the bargain. He was born on 
that very farm, and they told me that he had gone by 



82 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

that piece of silver and rubbed it with his sleeve until it 
reflected his countenance and seemed to say to him : 
"Here, take me ! Here is a hundred thousand dollars 
right down here in the rocks just for the taking!" But 
he wouldn't take it. This was in Newburyport, Mass. 
He wouldn't believe in silver at home. He said: 
"There is no silver in Newburyport; it is all away 
off — well, I don't know where." And he didn't ! But 
somewhere else. And he was a Professor of Min- 
eralogy. I don't know anything I would better enjoy 
than taking the whole time telling of blunders like this 
which I have heard professors have made. 

6. Yet nearly every person here will say: "I never 
had any acres of diamonds, or any gold mines or 
any silver mines." But I say to you that you did have 
silver mines and gold mines and acres of diamonds, 
and you have them now. You had an opportunity to 
be rich ; and to some of you it has been a hardship to 
purchase a ticket for this lecture. Yet you have no 
right to be poor. It is all wrong. You have no right 
to be poor. It is your duty to be rich. 

"Oh," you will say, "Mr. Conwell, can you, as a 
Christian teacher, tell young people to spend their 
lives making money?" 

Yes, I do. You ought to make money. Money is 
power, and it ought to be in the hands of good men. 

One of my Theological students came to me once to 
labor with me over my heresy that money is power. 
He said: "Mr. Conwell, does not the Scripture say 
that money 'is the root of all evil'?" 

I asked him : "Have you been spending your time 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 83 

making a new Bible when you should have been study- 
ing theology?" 

He said, "that is in the old Bible." 

I said, "I would like to have you find it for me; I 
have never seen it." 

He triumphantly brought a Bible and with all the 
bigoted pride of a narrow sectarian who founds his 
creed on some misinterpretation of Scripture threw it 
down before me and said, "There it is; you can read 
it for yourself." 

I said to him: "Young man, you will learn before 
you get much older that you can't trust another de- 
nomination to read the Bible for you. Please read it 
yourself and remember that "Emphasis is exegesis." 

So he read, "The love of money is the root of all 
evil." 

Indeed it is. The love of money is the root of all 
evil. The love of the money rather than the love of 
the good it secures is a dangerous evil in the commu- 
nity. The desire to get hold of money and to hold 
onto it, hugging the dollar until the eagle squeals, is 
the root of all evil. But it is a grand ambition for men 
to have the desire to gain money that they may use it 
for the benefit of their fellow men. 

7. Young man, you may never have the opportunity 
to charge at the head of your nation's troops on some 
Santiago's heights ; young woman, you may never be 
;called on to go out on the seas like Grace Darling 
to save suffering humanity. But every one of you 
can earn money honestly, and with that money you 
can fight the battles of peace; and the victories of 
peace are always grander than those of war. 



84 THE DBUVBRY OF A SPEECH 

I say to you, that you ought to be rich. 

"Well," you say, "I would like to he rich but I 
have never had an opportunity. I never had any dia- 
monds about me !" 

My friends, you did have an opportunity. And let 
us see where your mistake was. What business have 
you been in? 

"Oh," some man or woman will say, "I keep a store 
up on one of these side streets, and I am so far from 
a great commercial center that I cannot make money." 

"Are you poor? How long have you kept that 
store?" 

"Twenty years." 

"Twenty years, and not worth five hundred thou- 
sand dollars now? There is something the matter — 
not with the side street, but with you." 

"Oh now," you will say, "any person knows you 
must be in the center of trade if you are going to make 
money." 

The man of common sense will not admit that this 
is necessarily true at all. If you are keeping that 
store and you are not making money, it would have 
bee/i better for the community if they had kicked you 
out of that store nineteen years ago. 

It is a crime to go into business and lose money, be- 
cause it is a curse to the community. No man has a 
moral right to transact business without profit to him- 
self and others. Unless he lives and lets live, he is 
not an honest man in business. There are no excep- 
tions to this great rule. 

8. When I was young my father kept a country 
store, and once in a while he left me in charge of that 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 85 

store. Fortunately for him it was not often. One 
day while I had it in charge, a man came into the 
door and said: "Do you keep jack-knives?" 

"No, we don't keep jack-knives." Then I went off" 
and whistled a tune, and what did I care for that man ! 
Then another came in the same door and said: "Do 
you keep jack-knives?" 

"No, we don't keep jack-knives." And I went off 
and whistled another tune, and what did I care for 
that man ! 

After a few days another man came in that same 
door and said: "Do you keep jack-knives?" 

"No, we don't keep jack-knives. Do you suppose 
we are keeping this store just for the purpose of sup- 
plying the whole neighborhood with jack-knives?" 

Do you carry on your business like that? Do you 
ask what was the difficulty with it ? The difficulty was 
that I had not learned that the foundation principles 
of business success and of Christianity itself are the 
same. It is the whole of every man's life to be doing 
for his fellow men. And he who can do the most for 
his fellow men is entitled to the greatest reward him- 
self. Not only so saith God's Holy Book, but so 
saith every man's business common sense. If I had 
been carrying on my father's store on a Christian 
plan I would have had a jack-knife for the third man 
that asked for it. 

But you say, "I don't carry on my store like that." 
If you have not made money you are carrying on your 
store like that. I come to you tomorrow morning and 
inquire, "Do you know Mr. A?" 



86 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

"Oh yes. He lives up in the next 'block. He trades 
here." 

"Well, where did he come from when he came 
here?" 

"I don't know." 

"Does he own his own house?" 

"I don't know." 

"What business is he in?" 

"I don't know." 

"Do his children go to school?" 

"I don't know." 

"What ticket dees he vote? What church does he 
go to?" 

"I don't know, and I don't care." 

Do you answer me like that tomorrow morning? 
Then you are carrying on your business just as I car- 
ried on my father's business. You don't know where 
neighbor A came from and you don't care. You don't 
know what church he goes to and you don't care. If 
you had cared, you would have been a rich man to- 
day. 

9. Young man, remember if you are going to in- 
vest your life or talent or money you must look around 
and see what people need, and then invest your life or 
talent or money in that which they need most. Then 
will your fortune be made, for they must take care of 
you. It is a difficult lesson to learn. 

One young man will say, "I cannot go into' the mer- 
cantile business because I have no capital." 

Capital ! Capital ! Capital ! is the cry of a dudish 
generation that cannot see over its own collar. Who 
are the rich men now? The poor boys of fifty years 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 87 

ago. You know it. If they hadn't been poor then 
they wouldn't be rich now. The statistics of Massa- 
chusetts say, and I presume it holds good in your 
state, that not one rich man's son in seventeen ever 
dies rich. T pity the rich man's son. He is not to be 
praised for his magnificent, palatial home, not to be 
congratulated on having plenty of money or yachts 
or carriages or diamonds. Oh no, he is rather to be 
commiserated. It is often a misfortune to be born 
the son of a rich man. There are many things a rich 
man's son cannot know because he is not passing 
through the school of actual experience. 

A young man once asked me, "What is the happiest 
hour in the history of a man's life?" The answer I 
gave him was this : The happiest hour of a man's life 
is when he takes his bride for the first time over the 
threshold of his own door, into a house which he has 
earned by his own hands ; and as he enters he says to 
her, "Wife, I earned this house myself." Oh, that is 
the grandest moment a man can know! He says to 
her with eloquence of feeling no words of mine can 
ever touch : "Wife, I earned this home ; it is all 
mine, and I divide it with thee." It is a magnificent 
moment. 

But the rich man's son can never know that mo- 
ment. He may go into a house that is more beauti- 
ful, but as he takes his wife into his mansion he will 
go all through it and say to her: "My mother gave 
me that ! My mother gave me that ! My mother gave 
me that !" until his wife wishes she had married his 
mother ! I pity such a man as that. 

10. It is said that the elder Vanderbilt, when a boy, 



88 THB DBUVBRY OF A SPBBCH 

went to his father and said, "Father, did you earn all 
your money?" and the old Commodore said, "I did, I 
earned every penny of it." 

And he did. It is cruel to slander the rich because 
they have been successful. It is a shame to "look 
down" on the rich the way we do. They are not scoun- 
drels because they have gotten money. They have 
blessed the world. They have gone into great enter- 
prises that have enriched the nation, and the nation has 
enriched them. It is all wrong for us to accuse a 
rich man of dishonesty simply because he secured 
money. Go through this city, and your very best peo- 
ple are among your richest people. Owners of prop- 
erty are always the best citizens. 

The elder Vanderbilt went to his father and said, 
"Did you earn all your money?" And when the Com- 
modore replied that he did the boy said, "Then I will 
earn mine." 

And he insisted on going to work for three dollars 
a week. If the rich man's son will go to work like 
that he will be able to take care of his father's money 
when the father is gone. If he has the bravery to 
fight the battle of poverty like the poor boy, then of 
course he has a double advantage. But as a rule the 
rich father won't allow his son to work; and as for 
the mother! Oh, she would think it a social disgrace 
for her poor weak little lilyfingered sissy sort of a 
boy to earn his living with honest toil. And so I say 
it is not capital you want. It is not copper cents, but 
common sense. 

Let me illustrate again. A. T. Stewart had a dollar 
and fifty cents to begin life on. That was, of course, 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 89 

before he was a school teacher. He lost eighty-seven 
cents on his first venture. How did he come to lose it? 
He lost it because he purchased some needles, thread 
and buttons to sell which people didn't want. And 
he said, "I will never do that again". Then he went 
around first to the doors of the houses and asked the 
people what they did want. Then when he found 
out what they wanted he invested his sixty-three 
cents and supplied a known demand. 

Why does one merchant go beyond another? Why 
does one manufacturer outsell another? It is sim- 
ply because that one has found out what people want, 
and does not waste his money buying things they do 
not need. That is the whole of it. And A. T. Stewart 
said: "I am not going to buy things people do not 
want. I will take an interest in people and study 
their needs." And he pursued that until he was worth 
forty millions of dollars. 

11. But a better illustration was John Jacob Astor, 
the elder. They say that he had a mortgage on a 
millinery store. I never reach this point without 
thinking that the ladies will say: "Fools rush in 
where angels fear to tread." But John Jacob Astor had 
a mortgage on a millinery store, and foreclosed the 
mortgage and went into business with the people who 
had failed on his hands. After he entered into part- 
nership he went out and sat down on a bench in the 
park. What was the successful merchant doing out 
there, in partnership with the people who had just 
failed on his hands ? Ah, my friends, he had the most 
important, and, to my mind, the pleasantest part of 
that partnership. He was out there watching the la- 



9 o THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

dies as they went by, — and where is the man who 
would not get rich at that business! As he sat upon 
the bench, if a lady passed with her shoulders thrown 
back and her head up, and looking straight to the 
front, as though she didn't care if all the world did 
gaze upon her, then John Jacob Astor studied the bon- 
net she wore ; and before it was out of sight, he knew 
the shape of the frame, the curl of the lace, the crimp 
of the feathers, and lots of intricate things that go in- 
to a bonnet which I cannot describe. Then he went 
to his millinery store and said: "Now put into the 
show window just such a bonnet as I describe to you, 
for I have just seen a real lady who likes just such a 
bonnet." Then he went out and sat down again. An- 
other lady, with another form and complexion came, 
and of course she wore another style of bonnet. He 
then went back and described that and had that put 
into the window. He didn't fill his show window full 
of hats to drive people away, and then sit down in the 
back of the store and bawl because people went some- 
where else to trade. He didn't have a hat or a bon- 
net that some lady didn't like. That has since been 
the wealthiest millinery firm on the face of the earth. 
There has been taken out of the business seventeen 
million dollars and over, by partners who have re- 
tired. Yet not a dollar of capital have they ever put 
into that business except what they turned in from 
their profits to use as capital. Now John Jacob As- 
tor made the fortune of that millinery firm, not by 
lending them money, but by finding out what the la- 
dies liked for bonnets before they wasted any ma- 
terial in making them up. Now if a man can foresee 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 91 

the millinery business, he can foresee anything under 
heaven. 

12. I want to illustrate again. There was a man in 
Hingham, Massachusetts, who was a carpenter and 
out of work. He sat around the stove until his wife 
told him to go out doors, and he did — what every 
man in Massachusetts is compelled to do by law — 
he obeyed his wife. He went out and sat down on the 
shore of the bay and he whittled out an oak shingle 
into a wooden chain. His children, that evening, 
quarreled over it, so he whittled another to keep 
peace in the family. While he was whittling the 
second toy a neighbor came in and said to him : "Why 
don't you whittle toys and sell them? You can make 
money." The carpenter said: "I could not whittle 
toys, and if I could do it I would not know what to 
make." There is the whole thing. It is to know what 
to make. It is the secret of life everywhere. You may 
take it in the ministry; you may take it in law; yoix 
may take it in mechanics or labor ; you may take it in 
professional life or anywhere on earth; the whole 
thing is what to make of yourself for other people. 
W'hat to make is the great difficulty. 

He said he would not know what to make. His 
neighbor said to him with good New England common 
sense: "Why don't you ask your own children what 
to make?" 

"Oh," said he, "my children are different from 
other people's children." 

I used to see people like that when I taught school. 
But he consulted his children later and whittled toys 
to please them, and found that other people's children 



92 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

wanted the same thing. He called his children right 
around his feet and whittled out of fire wood the 
Hingham tops, the wooden shovels, the wooden buckets 
and such things. And when his children were espe- 
cially pleased he then made copies to sell. He began 
to get a little capital of his own earning, and secured 
a foot lathe, and then secured a room, then hired a 
factory, and then hired power, and so he went on. The 
last law case I ever tried in my life was in the U. S. 
Court Room at Boston, and this very Hingham man 
who had whittled those toys stood upon the stand. He 
was the last man I ever cross-examined. Then I left 
the law and went into the ministry : left practicing en- 
tirely and went to preaching exclusively. But I said 
to this man as he stood upon the stand: "When did 
you begin to whittle those toys?" 

He said "in 1870". 

Said I, "In these seven years, how much have those 
toys become worth?" 

He answered, "Do you mean the taxable value, or 
the estimated value?" 

I said, "Tell his Honor the taxable value, that there 
may be no question about it." 

He answered from the witness stand, under oath, 
"Seventy-eight thousand dollars." 

13. But our wealth is too near. I was speaking 
in New Britain, Conn., on this very subject; there 
sat five or six rows from me a lady. I noticed the 
lady at the time from the color of her bonnet. I said 
to them what I say to you now, "Your wealth is too 
near to you, you are looking right over it." She went 
home after the lecture and tried to take off her col- 



ACRBS OP DIAMONDS 93 

lar. The button stuck in the button-hole ; she twisted 
and tugged and pulled, and finally broke it out of the 
button-hole and threw it away. She said, "I wonder 
why they don't make decent collar buttons." 

Her husband said to her, "After what Conwell said 
tonight, why don't you get up a collar-button your- 
self ? Did he not say that if you need anything other 
people need it? So if you need a collar button there 
are millions of people needing it. Get up a collar 
button and get rich. Wherever there is a need there is 
a fortune!' 

Then she made up her mind to do it, and when a 
woman makes up her mind and doesn't say anything 
about it, she does it. And she invented this snap 
button, a kind of button that snaps together from two 
pieces through the button-hole. That very woman 
can now go over the sea every summer in her own 
yacht and take her husband with her; and if he were 
dead she would have enough money left to buy a 
foreign count, or duke, or some such thing. 

What is my lesson in it? I said to her what I say 
to you. Your fortune is too near to you, so near that 
you are looking over it. She had to look over it. It 
was right under her chin, and it is just as near to you. 

14. In East Brookfield, Mass., there was a shoe- 
maker out of work. His wife drove him out of doors 
with a mop stick, because she wanted to mop around 
the stove. He went out and sat down on an ash bar- 
rel in the back yard. Close by that ash barrel ran a 
little mountain stream. I have sometimes wondered 
if, as he sat there on that ash barrel, he thought of 
Tennyson's beautiful poem: 



94 



THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 



"Chatter, chatter as I flow, to join the brimming river, 
Men may come, and men may go, but I go on for- 



I don't believe he thought of it because it was not a 
poetical situation, on an ash barrel in the back yard. 
But as he sat on that ash barrel, he looked down into 
the stream. And he saw a trout go flashing up the 
stream and hiding under the bank. He leaped down 
and caught up the fish in his hands and took him into 
the house. His wife sent it to a friend in Worcester. 
The friend wrote back that they would give five dol- 
lars for another such trout, and the shoemaker and 
his wife immediately started out to find one. They 
went up and down the stream, but not another trout 
was to be found. Then they went to the preacher. But 
that is not half as foolish as some other things young 
people go to a preacher for. That preacher could not 
explain why they could not find another trout, but he 
was true to his profession, he pointed the way. He 
said, "Secure Seth Green's book on the culture of 
trout and it will give you the information you need. 
They got the book and found that if they started with 
a pair of trout a trout would lay 3,600 eggs every 
year and that every trout would grow an ounce the 
first year and a quarter of a pound every succeeding 
year. So that in four years a man could secure from 
two trout four tons per annum to sell. They said, 
"Oh, we don't believe such a great story as that, but 
if we could raise a few and sell them for five dollars 
apiece we might make money. So. they purchased two 
little trout and put them in the stream, with a coal 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 95 

sifter down stream and a window screen up stream 
to keep the trout in. Afterwards they moved to the 
banks of the Connecticut River, and afterwards to the 
Hudson, and one of them has 'been on the U. S. Fish 
Commission and had a large share in the preparation 
for the World's Fair in 1900 at Paris. But he sat 
that day on that ash barrel in the back yard right by 
his acres of diamonds. But he didn't see them. He 
had not seen his fortune, although he had lived there 
for twenty-three years, until his wife drove him out 
there with a mop stick. It may be that you will not 
find your wealth until your wife assumes the scepter 
of power, but nevertheless your wealth is there. 

15. But the people who make the greatest mistakes 
are the farmers. When I could not keep my father's 
store he set me to work on the farm, knowing that as 
the ground was nearly all rock I could not do much 
harm there. 

I know by experience that a very ordinary man 
can be a lawyer. I also know that it does not take a 
man with a gigantic intellect to be a preacher. It 
takes a greater man than either to make a success- 
ful farmer today. The farmer will be more success- 
ful when he gives more attention to what people 
want, and not so much to what will grow, though he 
needs to watch both. But now the whole time of most 
of our farmers is taken up with what will grow. 

I was going up through Iowa a while ago, and saw 
the wheat decaying in the mud, and I said to a farmer : 
"Why is it that all this grain here is decaying instead 
of being marketed ?" 

He answered that it was because of the awful mon- 



9 6 THE DBUVBRY OP A SPBBCH 

opoly of the railroads. He didn't use the word "aw- 
ful", but he used one that he thought was more em- 
phatic. I got into the train and sympathized with 
the poor down-trodden farmer. 

The conductor came along pretty soon, and I asked 
him, "How much dividend does this railroad pay on its 
stock?" 

He looked at me and said, "It has not paid any for 
nine years and it has been in the hands of the re- 
ceiver most of the time." 

Then I changed my mind. If that farmer had 
raised what the people wanted, not only would he have 
been rich, but the railroad would have paid interest 
on its stock. 

I was at Evansville, Indiana, and a man drove up 
in his beautiful carriage and told me, "Eighteen years 
ago I borrowed two hundred dollars and went into 
farming. I began the first year to raise wheat, rye 
and hogs, but the second year I decided to' raise what 
the people wanted, so I plowed the ground over and 
put in small fruits. Now I own this farm and a great 
deal more." They told me at the hotel that he owned 
two-thirds of the stock in the bank of which he was 
president. He had made his money all because he 
had planted what people wanted. 

1 6. I asked a class in Minnesota once who were the 
great inventors, and a girl hopped up and said "Co- 
lumbus". Columbus was a great inventor. He mar- 
ried a wife who owned a farm, and he carried it on 
just as I carried on my father's farm. We took the 
hoe and went out and sat down on a rock. But as 
Columbus sat on that rock on the island of Porto 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 97 

Santo, Spain, he was thinking. I was not. That was 
a great difference. Columbus, as he sat on that rock, 
held in his hand a hoe-handle. He looked out on the 
ocean and saw the departing ships apparently sink into 
the sea, and the tops of the masts go down out of 
sight. Said Columbus, "This world is like a hoe 
handle : the farther off, the farther down, the farther 
off, the farther down, just like a hoe handle; I can 
sail around to the East Indies." How clear it all was ! 
Yet how simple the mind! It is the simplest minds 
that observe the very simplest things, which accom- 
plish the greatest marvels. 

I went up into New Hampshire to lecture, and when 
I came back I said I would never go up into New 
Hampshire again. And I said to a relative of mine 
who was a professor at Harvard : "It was cold all the 
time I was there, and I shivered so that my teeth 
shook." 

Said he, "Why did you shiver?" 

"Because it was cold." 

"No, that is not the reason you shivered." 

"Well, I shivered because I did not have bed 
clothes enough." 

"No, that is not the reason you shivered." 

"Well," said I, "Professor, you are a scientific man 
and I am not, I would like to have an expert, scientific 
opinion, now, why I shivered." 

He arose in his facetious way and said, "Young 
man, you shivered because you did not know any bet- 
ter! Didn't you have in your pocket a two-cent pa- 
per?" 

"Yes, I had a Herald and a Journal." 



9 8 TUB DBUVBRY OF A SPBBCH 

"That is it: you had them in your pocket. If you 
had spread one newspaper over your sheet when you 
went to bed you would have been as warm lying there 
as the richest man in America under his silk covers. 
But you shivered because you did not know enough to 
put a two-cent paper over your bed, and you had the 
paper in your pocket." 

17. It is the power to appreciate the little things 
that bring success. How many women want divorces, 
and ought to have them, too. But how many divorces 
originate like this: a man will hurry home from the 
factory, and his wife rushes in from the kitchen with 
the potatoes that have been taken out before they 
seem to be done, and she puts them on the table for 
her husband to eat. He chops them up and eats them 
in a hurry. They go down in hard lumps, he doesn't 
feel good, he is all full of crankiness. He frets and 
scolds, and perhaps swears, and there is a row in that 
family right away. And these two hearts that were 
almost divinely united will separate in Satanic hatred. 
What is the difficulty? The difficulty is that that lady 
doesn't know what all these ladies do know, that if 
with potatoes raised in lime soil she had put in a pinch 
of salt when she put them in the kettle, she could 
have brought them forth at the right time ready to 
laugh themselves to pieces with edible joy. He would 
have digested them readily, and there would have 
been love in that family, just for a little pinch of salt. 

Now I say, it is the appreciation of the little things 
that makes the great inventors of the world. I read 
in a newspaper the other day that a woman never in- 
vented anything. Of course this didn't refer to gos- 



ACRBS OP DIAMONDS 99 

sip, but to machines and improvements. If it had 
referred to gossip, it would have applied to that news- 
paper better than to women. Who invented the Jac- 
quard Loom? Mrs. Jacquard. Who invented the 
printer's roller? A woman. Who invented the cot- 
ton gin? Mrs. Green, although the patent was taken 
out on an improvement in Mr. Whitney's name. Who 
invented the sewing machine? A woman, Mrs. Howe, 
the wife of Elias Howe. If a woman can invent a 
sewing machine, if a woman can invent a printing 
roller, if a woman can invent a cotton-gin, we men 
can invent anything under heaven! I say that to en- 
courage the men. Anyhow our civilization would 
roll back if we should cross out the great inventions 
of women, though the patents were often taken out in 
the names of men. 

18. Let me illustrate only once more. Suppose I 
were to go through this house and shake hands with 
each of you and say : ''Please introduce me to the 
great men and women in this hall tonight." 

You would say, "Great men ! We don't have any 
here. There are none in this audience. For if you 
want to find great men you must go to some other 
part of the world. Great men always come from 
somewhere else." 

How many of your men with vast power to help 
your city, how many with great genius or great so- 
cial power, who might enrich and elevate and beau- 
tify their own city, are now taking their money and 
talents and spending them in foreign places instead of 
benefiting their own people here ? Yet here is the place 
for them to be great. There are as great men here as 



ioo THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

in any place of its size. But it is so natural for us to 
say that great men come from afar. They come from 
London, from Rome and from San Francisco, from 
New York or Manayunk or anywhere else. But there 
are just as great men hearing me speak tonight as 
there are elsewhere, yet who, because of their 
simplicity, are not appreciated. "The world knows 
nothing of its great men," says the philosopher; and 
it is true. Your neighbor is a great man, and it is 
time you appreciated it, and if you do not appreciate 
it now you never will. The only way to be a true 
patriot is to be a true patriot at home. A man who 
cannot benefit his own city should never be sent to 
Washington. Towns and cities are cursed because 
their own people talk them down. The man who can- 
not bless his own community, the place where he lives, 
should never be called a patriot anywhere else. To 
these young men I want to utter this cry with all my 
force. This is the place for you to be great, and 
here are your great men. 

19. But we teach our young people to believe that 
all the great people are away off. I heard a professor 
in an Illinois college say, "Nearly all the great men 
are dead/' We don't want him in Philadelphia. They 
don't want him anywhere. The greatest men are liv- 
ing now, and will only be exceeded by the generations 
to come and he who appreciates this fact will look 
around him and respect his neighbor. I say tonight 
that the great men of the world are those who appre- 
ciate what is next to them, and the danger to our na- 
tion now is that we belittle everything that is at home. 

Have you heard the campaign speeches this year? 



ACRBS OP DIAMONDS 101 

I heard a man at the Academy of Music say that our 
nation is going to ruin, that the Ship of State is drift- 
ing on the rocks and will soon be shattered into ten 
thousand fragments, and this republic will be no 
more ; that there will be founded an empire, and upon 
the empire, we will put a throne, and upon the throne 
will be placed a tyrant, and he with his iron heel will 
grind the people to dust. It is a lie ! Never in the his- 
tory of God's government of mankind was there a 
nation stepping upward more certainly, toward all 
that is grand and beautiful and true, than the Ameri- 
can Nation today. Let the politicians say what they 
will for personal greed, let them declaim with all 
their powers and try to burden the people, you and I 
know that whichever way the elections go the nation 
will not be destroyed. The American people are not 
dead; it is a living body, this mighty republic, it can- 
not be killed by a single election. And they that will 
belittle our nation are not patriots. L,et the land be 
filled with hope. Some will say, "Oh well, the na- 
tion is having a hard time." But it is not. The Bible 
says, "It was good for me that I was afflicted." We 
are getting down to where we can take stock. In the 
next five years you will see the most flourishing in- 
stitutions; all through this land there will be a pros- 
perity such as this land never knew before. What- 
ever the result of the election, don't belittle your own 
nation. 

20. A young man says, "There is going to be a great 
man here when there comes a war. When we get 
into another conflict with Spain over Cuba, with Eng- 
land over the Monroe Doctrine, or over the Russian 



102 THE DBUVBRY OF A SPEECH 

boundary, or with New Jersey or some other distant 
country of the world, then I will sweep up among the 
glittering bayonets, then I will tear down their flag 
from the staff, bear it away in triumph, and come 
home with stars on my shoulder and hold every office 
in the gift of the nation. Then I will be great !" 

Young man, remember greatness does not consist in 
holding office even in war. The office does not make 
the great man. But alas ! we mislead the young in 
teaching history. If you ask a scholar in school who 
sank the Merrimac, he will answer "Hobson", and tell 
seven-eights of a lie. For eight men sank the Merri- 
mac. Yet where are the women here tonight who 
have kissed the other seven men? 

A young man says, "I was studying the history of 
the war the other day, and I read about Generals 
Grant, Meade, Beauregard, Hood, and those great 
leaders, and they were great." 

Did you read anything about their predecessors? 
There is very little in History about them. If the of- 
fice had made their predecessors great you would 
never have heard of Grant or Sherman or McClel- 
lan. But they were great men intrinsically, not made 
so by the office. The way we teach history leads the 
young to think that when people get into office they 
become great. But it is terribly misleading. 

Every great general of the war is credited with 
many victories he never knew anything about, be- 
cause they were won by his subordinates. But it is 
unfair to give the credit to the general who did not 
know anything about it. I tell you that if the light- 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 103 

ning of heaven had struck out of existence every man 
who wore shoulder straps in our wars, there would 
have arisen out of the ranks of our private soldiers 
just as great men to lead the nation on to victory. 

21. I will give one more illustration. I don't like 
to give it, I don't know how I ever fell into the habit. 
Indeed it was first given at a Grand Army post of 
which I was a member. I hesitate to give it now. 

I close my eyes and I can see my own native hills 
once more, I can see my mountain home, the Con- 
gregational Church and the Town Hall. They are 
there spread before me with increasing detail as the 
years fly by. I can see again the crowd that was there 
in the war time, 1864, dressed in red, white and blue, 
the flags flying, the band playing. I see a platoon of 
soldiers who have returned from one term of service 
and re-enlisted for a second. They are now to be 
received by the mountain town. Well do I remember 
the day. I was captain of the company. Although I 
was only in my teens, I was marching at the head of 
that company and was puffed out with pride. A cam- 
bric needle would have burst me all to pieces. I am 
sincerely ashamed of the whole thing now. But in 
the august pride of my youth I was being received 
by the town authorities. We marched into the town 
hall. They seated my soldiers in the middle of the 
hall and the crowds came in on the right and on the 
left. Then the town officers filed up on the platform 
and took their position in a half circle. The good old 
mayor of the town, and the Chairman of the Select- 
men, sat there in his dignity, with his powerful spec- 



104 THB DBLIVBRY OF A SPBBCH 

tacles. He may have thought that, if he could get 
into office, that would give him power to do almost 
anything. He never held an office before and never 
made a speech before. When he had taken his place, 
he saw me on the front seat, and he came right for- 
ward and invited me up on the platform with the Se- 
lectmen. Invited me! Why, no town officer ever 
took notice of me before I went to war. Yet, perhaps 
I ought not to say that, because one of them, I re- 
member, did once advise a teacher to "whale" me! 
But I meant, no "honorable mention". Now I was on 
the stand with the Selectmen. They gave me a prom- 
inent chair. I sat down and let my sword fall to the 
floor and waited to be received. Napoleon the Vth! 
"Pride goeth before destruction" — and it ought! 

22. When the Selectmen and mayor had taken their 
seats the mayor waited for a while, and then came 
forward to the table. Oh, that speech ! We had sup- 
posed he would simply introduce the Congregational 
minister who usually gave such public addresses. But 
you should have seen the surprise when this old man 
began to give the address on this august occasion. He 
had never delivered an address before. He thought 
that the office would make him an orator. But he had 
forgotten that a man must speak his piece as a boy 
if he would become an orator as a man. Yet he made 
a common mistake. So he had written out and learned 
it by heart. But he brought the manuscript with him, 
very wisely, and took it out, opened it, and spread it 
on the table, then adjusted his spectacles that he might 
see it. Then he walked back and came forward again 



ACRBS OF DIAMONDS 105 

to deliver that address. He must have studied the 
idea a great deal, for he assumed an "elocutionary at- 
titude". He "rested heavily on his left heel, slightly 
advanced his right foot, threw back his shoulders 
and placed his right foot at an angle of forty-five". 
As he stood in that elocutionary attitude, this is the 
way he delivered that speech: 

"Fellow citizens" — and then he paused until his 
fingers and knees shook. He began to swallow, then 
turned aside to look at his manuscript. "Fellow cit- 
izens : we are — we are — we are — we are very 
happy. We are very happy — we are very happy — 
we are very happy. We are very happy — to wel- 
come back to their native town — - to their native 
town — to their native town — these soldiers — these 
soldiers — who have fought and died, and — are 
back again in their native town. We are especially 
pleased — we are especially pleased — to see with us 
this young hero — (that meant me) — who in imag- 
ination we have seen leading his troops on to the 
deadly breach. We have seen his shining — we have 
seen his shining sword — his shining sword — flash- 
ing in the sunlight, as he called to his troops 'Come 
on !' " 

23. He was a good old man. But how little he knew 
about the war. If he had known anything about war 
at all, he would have known that it is next to a crime 
for an officer of infantry ever, in time of danger, to 
go ahead of his men. I, with "my shining sword 
flashing in the sunlight, calling to my troops "Come 
on' " — I never did it ! Do you suppose I would go in 



To6 THB DBLIVHRY 0? A SPEECH 

front of my men to be shot in front by the enemy and 
in the back by my own men? It is no place for an of- 
ficer. The place for an officer, in time of danger, is 
behind the private soldier. It is the private soldier 
who faces the enemy. Often, as a staff officer, I have 
ridden down the line before the battle, and as I rode, 
I have given the general's order, "Officers to the 
rear". And then every officer go^s behind the line 
of private soldiers, and the higher the officer's rank the 
farther behind he goes. It is the place for him, for if 
your officers and generals were killed on the first dis- 
charge where would the plan of battle be? How 
ashamed I was of the whole affair. In actual war 
such an officer has no right to go ahead of his men. 
Some of those men had carried that boy across the 
Carolina rivers. Some of them had given him their 
last draught of coffee. One of them had leaped in 
front of him and had his cheek-bone shot away : he 
had leaped in front of the boy to save his life. Some 
were not there at all, and the tears flowing from the 
eyes of the widows and orphans showed that they 
had gone down for their country. Yet in the good 
man's speech he scarcely noticed those who had died. 
The hero of the hour was that boy. We do not know 
even now where many of those comrades sleep. They 
went down to death. Sometimes in my dreams I call, 
"answer me, ye sighing pines of the Carolinas ; an- 
swer me, ye shining sands of Florida; answer me, ye 
crags and rocks of Kentucky and Tennessee; where 
sleep my dead?" But to my call no answer comes. I 
know not where they sleep, but this I know : they were 



ACRES OF DIAMONDS 107 

brave men ; they went down before a brave foe, fight- 
ing for a cause both believed to be right. Yet the hero 
of the hour was a boy. He was an officer — they 
were only private soldiers. 

24. As I went through the war, I learned a lesson 
I will never forget until the bell of time ceases to 
swing for me, that greatness consists not in holding 
an office. Greatness really consists in doing great 
deeds with little means, in the accomplishment of vast 
purposes, in the private ranks of life, in benefiting 
one's own neighborhood, in blessing one's own city, 
the community in which he lives. There, and there 
only, is the great test of human goodness and hu- 
man ability. He who waits for an office before he 
does great and noble deeds must fail altogether. 

I learned that lesson then, that henceforth in life I 
will call no man great simply because he holds an 
office. Greatness ! It is something more than office, 
something more than fame, more than genius. It is 
the great-heartedness that encloses those in need, 
reaches down to those below and lifts them up. May 
this thought come to every one of you who hear me 
tonight, and abide through future years. 

I close with the words of Bailey. He was not one 
of our greatest writers, but after all he was one of our 
best: 

"We live in deeds, not years, 
In feelings, not in figures on a dial, 
In thoughts, not breaths ; 
We should count time by heart throbs. 
He lives most who thinks most, — " 



108 THB DBUVBRY OF A SPBBCH 

And friends, if you forget everything else I say, 
don't forget these two lines : for if you think two 
thoughts where I think one, you live twice as much 
as I do in the same length of time, — 

"He most lives who thinks most, 
Who feels the noblest, 
And who acts the best." 



THE LIBERTY OF MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD 

By Robert G. Ingersow, 

Robert Green Ingersoll was born at Dresden, New York, 
August ii, 1833. His father was a Congregational preacher 
of some ability but of strict orthodox views. There seems 
to be no foundation for the story that Ingersoll's agnosticism 
was due to any tyranny of his father. Ingersoll himself 
speaks with the greatest affection of his father. In fact, the 
father seems to have granted young Robert the perfect right 
to form opinions for himself, and never to have been unduly 
insistent on his own views. The family moved to Illinois, 
where Robert grew to manhood. In 1852-3 he tried school 
teaching, "boarding 'round," but got into trouble with the 
school authorities and had to quit. Having been repeatedly 
asked what he thought of baptism, he is said to have replied, 
"With soap, baptism is a good thing." This ended his teach- 
ing experience. In 1853 he began the study of law and about 
1855 began to practice in partnership with his brother, Ebon 
C. Ingersoll. They moved their offices from Shawneetown 
to Peoria in 1857. Robert was a candidate for Congress in 
i860 on the Democratic ticket, and, strangely enough, made 
his campaign largely on the basis of emancipation, going fur- 
ther than the Republicans led by Lincoln. He was defeated. 
From the day of the attack on Fort Sumpter he was a 
Republican and so continued until his death. He was one 
of the first to enlist in the armies of the North in 1861, and 
helped to raise three regiments of volunteers. He became a 
colonel. He was captured by the Confederates and paroled. 
Despairing of being exchanged, he finally resigned his com- 
mission in 1863. 

From 1867 to 1869 he was attorney-general of Illinois. 
Here, began a career that, according to many able political 



no THB DELIVERY OF A SPBBCH 

critics, might easily have ended in the White House had it 
not been for Mr. Ingersoll's religious utterances. As it was, 
he absolutely refused to give up his attacks on organized reli- 
gion, and so his political career ended where it began, and 
he is known today, not as a great statesman, but as the cham- 
pion of political and religious freedom, and as "The Great 
Agnostic." On June 15, 1876, as a delegate to the National 
Republican Convention in Cincinnati, he made the speech 
nominating James G. Blaine for the presidency. It is perhaps 
the greatest nominating speech on record. 

In 1877 he first delivered "The Liberty of Man, Woman 
and Child." This was followed by many others, including 
the lecture on Burns and the one on Shakespeare. On May 
31, 1879, he was called upon to fulfill the promise of years 
before, the compact made between the brothers, Robert and 
Ebon, that whichever died first the other would say the final 
words over his grave. As he stood over the grave of the 
brother whom he loved as he did his own life, he gave voice 
to that most beautiful of tributes, known as "A Tribute to 
Ebon C. Ingersoll." His oratorical triumphs went on and on, 
until he was generally conceded to be the most eloquent man 
of his generation. Henry Ward Beecher, the greatest preacher 
of his age, said of him, "He is the most brilliant speaker of 
the English tongue of all men on this globe." He died of 
angina pectoris, very suddenly, July 22, 1899. 

"The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child" is here reprinted 
in full. It will be seen that it contains more assignments 
than the "Acres of Diamonds." It is suggested that the 
teacher choose those that best suit the needs of the class, 
leaving out the rest. Other modifications of the assignments 
may also be made in the way of cuttings. It is thought best 
to give the lecture complete, to afford a basis for the extem- 
poraneous assignment following. But in the memorized 
speeches such parts may be omitted as circumstances make 
it advisable to omit. 

The lecture is reprinted by the kind permission of Mr. 



THE LIBERTY OF MAN in 

C. P. Farrell, publisher, Mr. Ingersoll's brother-in-law, 117 
East Twenty-first Street, Gramercy Park, New York City. 
It is taken from the Dresden Edition of Mr. Ingersoll's works, 
Volume I, page 329. 

Liberty Sustains the: Same: Relation to Mind 
That Space: Does to Matter 

1. There is no slavery but ignorance. Liberty is the 
child of intelligence. 

The history of man is simply the history of slav- 
ery, of injustice and brutality, together with the means 
by which he has, through the dead and desolate years, 
slowly and painfully advanced. He has been the sport 
and prey of priest and king, the food of superstition 
and cruel might. Crowned force has governed ig- 
norance through fear. Hypocrisy and tyranny — two 
vultures — have fed upon the liberties of man. From 
all these there has been, and is, but one means of es- 
cape — intellectual development. Upon the back of 
industry has been the whip. Upon the brain have been 
the fetters of superstition. Nothing has been left un- 
done by the enemies of freedom. Every art and arti- 
fice, every cruelty and outrage has been practiced and 
perpetrated to destroy the rights of man. In this great 
struggle every crime has been rewarded and every 
virtue has been punished. Reading, writing, think- 
ing and investigating have all been crimes. 

Every science has been an outcast. 

All the altars and all the thrones united to arrest the 
forward march of the human race. The king said 
that mankind must not work for themselves. The 
priest said that mankind must not think for them- 



H2 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

selves. One forged chains for the hands, the other for 
the soul. Under this infamous regime the eagle of the 
human intellect was for ages a slimy serpent of hy- 
pocrisy. 

The human race was imprisoned. Through some of 
the prison 'bars came a few struggling rays of light. 
Against these bars Science pressed its pale and 
thoughtful face, wooed by the holy dawn of human 
advancement. Bar after bar was broken away. A few 
grand men escaped and devoted their lives to the lib- 
eration of their fellows. 

Only a few years ago there was a great awakening 
of the human mind. Men began to inquire by what 
right a crowned robber made them work for him? 
The man who asked this question was called a traitor. 
Others asked by what right does a robed hypocrite 
rule my thought? Such men were called infidels. The 
priest said, and the king said, where is this spirit of 
investigation to stop? They said then and they say 
now, that it is dangerous for man to be free. I deny 
it. Out on the intellectual sea there is room enough 
for every sail. In the intellectual air there is space 
enough for every wing. 

2. The man who does not do his own thinking is a 
slave, and is a traitor to himself and to his fellow- 
men. 

Every man should stand under the blue and stars, 
under the infinite flag of nature, the peer of every 
other man. 

Standing in the presence of the Unknown, all have 
the same right to think, and all are equally interested 
in the great questions of origin and destiny. All I 



THE LIBERTY OF MAN 1 13 

claim, all I plead for, is liberty of thought and expres- 
sion. That is all. I do not pretend to tell what is 
absolutely true, but what I think is true. I do not 
pretend to tell all the truth. 

I do not claim that I have floated level with the 
heights of thought, or that I have descended to the 
very depths of things. I simply claim that what ideas 
I have, I have a right to express; and that any man 
who denies that right to me is an intellectual thief and 
robber. That is all. 

Take those chains from the human soul. Break 
those fetters. If I have no right to think, why have I 
a brain? If I have no such right, have three or four 
men, or any number, who may get together, and sign 
a creed, and build a house, and put a steeple upon it, 
and a bell in it — have they the right to think? The 
good men, the good women are tired of the whip and 
the lash in the realm of thought. They remember the 
chain and fagot with a shudder. They are free, and 
they give liberty to others. Whoever claims any right 
that he is unwilling to accord to his fellow-men is dis- 
honest and infamous. 

In the good old times, our fathers had the idea that 
they could make people believe to suit them. Our an- 
cestors, in the ages that are gone, really believed that 
by force you could convince a man. You cannot change 
the conclusion of the brain by torture; nor by social 
ostracism. But I will tell you what you can do by 
these, and what you have done. You can make hypo- 
crites by the million. You can make a man say that 
he has changed his mind ; but he remains of the same 
opinion still. Put fetters all over him; crush his feet 



ii4 



THE DBLIVBRY OF A SPEECH 



in iron boots ; stretch him to the last gasp upon the 
holy rack; burn him, if you please, but his ashes will 
be of the same opinion still. 

3. Our fathers in the good old times — and the 
best thing I can say about them is, that they have 
passed away — had an idea that they could force men 
to think their way. That idea is still prevalent in 
many parts, even of this country. Even in our day 
some extremely religious people say, "We will not 
trade with that man; we will not vote for him; we 
will not hire him if he is a lawyer; we will die before 
we will take his medicine if he is a doctor; we will 
not invite him to dinner; we will socially ostracise 
him ; he must come to our church ; he must believe our 
doctrines ; he must worship our god or we will not in 
any way contribute to his support." 

In the old times of which I have spoken, they de- 
sired to make all men think exactly alike. All the me- 
chanical ingenuity of the world cannot make two 
clocks run exactly alike, and how are you going to 
make hundreds of millions of people, differing in brain 
and disposition, in education and aspiration, in condi- 
tions and surroundings, each clad in a living robe of 
passionate flesh — how are you going to make them 
think and feel alike? If there is an infinite god, one 
who made us, and wishes us to think alike, why did 
he give a spoonful of brains to one, and a magnifi- 
cent intellectual development to another? Why is it 
that we have all degrees of intelligence, from ortho- 
doxy to genius, if it was intended that all should think 
and feel alike? 

I used to read in books how our fathers persecuted 



THE LIBERTY OF MAN 115 

mankind. But I never appreciated it. I read it, but 
it did not burn itself into my soul. I did not really 
appreciate the infamies that have been committed in 
the name of religion, until I saw the iron arguments 
that Christians used. I saw the Thumbscrew — two 
little pieces of iron, armed on the inner surfaces with 
protuberances, to prevent their slipping; through 
each end a screw uniting the two pieces. And when 
some man denied the efficacy of baptism, or may be 
said, "I do not believe that a fish ever swallowed a 
man to keep him from drowning," then they put his 
thumb between these pieces of iron and in the name 
of love and universal forgiveness, began to screw 
these pieces together. When this was done most men 
said, "I will recant." Probably I should have done 
the same. Probably I would have said : "Stop ; I will 
admit anything that you wish ; I will admit that there 
is one god or a million, one hell or a billion ; suit your- 
selves ; but stop." 

But there was now and then a man who would not 
swerve the breadth of a hair; there was now and then 
some sublime heart, willing to die for an intellectual 
conviction. Had it not been for such men, we would 
be savages tonight. Had it not been for a few brave, 
heroic souls in every age, we would have been canni- 
bals, with pictures of wild beasts tattooed upon our 
flesh, dancing around some dried snake fetich. 

4. Let us thank every good and noble man who 
stood so grandly, so proudly, in spite of opposition, of 
hatred and death, for what he believed to be the 
truth. 

Heroism did not excite the respect of our fathers. 



n6 THE DBLIVBRY OF A SPEECH 

The man who would not recant was not forgiven. 
They screwed the thumbscrews down to the last pang, 
and then threw their victim into some dungeon, where, 
in the throbbing silence and darkness, he might suffer 
the agonies of the fabled damned. This was done in 
the name of love — in the name of mercy — in the 
name of the compassionate Christ. 

I saw, too, what they called the Collar of Torture. 
Imagine a circle of iron, and on the inside a hundred 
points almost as sharp as needles. This argument was 
fastened about the throat of the sufferer. Then he 
could not walk, nor sit down, nor stir without the 
neck being punctured by these points. In a little 
while the throat would begin to swell, and suffoca- 
tion would end the agonies of that man. This man, 
it may be, had committed the crime of saying, with 
tears upon his cheeks, "I do not believe that God, the 
father of us all, will damn to eternal perdition any of 
the children of men." 

I saw another instrument, called the Scavenger's 
Daughter. Think of a pair of shears with handles, 
not only where they now are, but at the points as 
well, and just above the pivot that unites the blades, 
a circle of iron. In the upper handles the hands would 
be placed; in the lower, the feet; and through the 
iron ring, at the centre, the head of the victim would 
be forced. In this condition, he would be thrown 
prone upon the earth, and the strain upon the muscles 
produced such agony that insanity would in pity end 
his pain. 

This was done by gentlemen who said : "Whosoever 



THE LIBBRTY OF MAN 117 

smiteth thee upon one cheek turn to him the other 
also." 

I saw the Rack. This was a box like the bed of a 
wagon, with a windlass at each end, with levers, and 
ratchets to prevent slipping; over each windlass went 
chains; some were fastened to the ankles of the suf- 
ferer; others to his wrists. And then priests, clergy- 
men, divines, saints, began turning these windlasses, 
and kept turning, until the ankles, the knees, the hips, 
the shoulders, the elbows, the wrists of the victim 
were all dislocated, and the sufferer was wet with the 
sweat of agony. And they had standing by a physic- 
ian to feel his pulse. What for? To save his life? 
Yes. In mercy ? No ; simply that they might rack 
him once again. 

This was done, remember, in the name of civiliza- 
tion; in the name of law and order; in the name of 
mercy ; in the name of religion ; in the name of the 
most merciful Christ. 

5. Sometimes, when I read and think about these 
frightful things, it seems to me that I have suffered 
all these horrors myself. It seems sometimes, as 
though I had stood upon the shore of exile and gazed 
with tearful eyes toward home and native land ; as 
though my nails had been torn from my hands, and 
into the bleeding quick needles had been thrust; as 
though my feet had 'been crushed in iron boots; as 
though I had been chained in the cell of the Inquisi- 
tion and listened with dying ears for the coming foot- 
steps of release ; as though I had stood upon the scaf- 
fold and had seen the glittering axe fall upon me ; as 



n8 THE DBUVBRY OF A SPEECH 

though I had been upon the rack and had seen, bend- 
ing above me, the white faces of hypocrite priests ; as 
though I had been taken from my fireside, from my 
wife and children, taken to the public square, chained ; 
as though fagots had been piled about me; as though 
the flames had climbed around my limbs and scorched 
my eyes to blindness, and as though my ashes had 
been scattered to the four winds, by all the countless 
hands of hate. And when I so feel, I swear that 
while I live I will do what little I can to preserve and 
to augment the liberties of man, woman, and child. 

It is a question of justice, of mercy, of honesty, of 
intellectual development. If there is a man in the 
world who is not willing to give to every human being 
every right he claims for himself, he is just so much 
nearer a barbarian than I am. It is a question of hon- 
esty. The man who is not willing to give to every 
other the same intellectual rights he claims for him- 
self, is dishonest, selfish, and brutal. 

It is a question of intellectual development. Who- 
ever holds another man responsible for his honest 
thought, has a deformed and distorted brain. It is a 
question of intellectual development. 

6. A little while ago I saw models of nearly every- 
thing that man has made. I saw models of all the 
water craft, from the rude dug-out in which floated 
a naked savage — one of our ancestors — a naked 
savage, with teeth two inches in length, with a spoon- 
ful of brains in the back of his head — I saw models 
of all the water craft of the world, from that dug-out 
up to a man-of-war, that carries a hundred guns and 
miles of canvas — from that dug-out to the steamship 



THE LIBERTY OF MAN 119 

that turns its brave prow from the port of New York, 
with a compass like a conscience, crossing three thous- 
and miles of billows without missing a throb or beat 
of its mighty iron heart. 

I saw at the same time the weapons that man has 
made, from a club, such as was grasped by that same 
savage, when he crawled from his den in the ground 
and hunted a snake for his dinner; from that club 
to the boomerang, to the sword, to the cross-bow, to 
the blunderbuss, to the flint-lock, to the cap-lock, to 
the needle-gun, up to a cannon cast by Krupp, capable 
of hurling a ball weighing two thousand pounds 
through eighteen inches of solid steel. 

I saw, too, the armor from the shell of a turtle, that 
one of our brave ancestors lashed upon his breast 
when he went to fight for his country; the skin of a 
porcupine, dried with the quills on, which this same 
savage pulled over his orthodox head, up to the shirts 
of mail, that were worn in the Middle Ages, that 
laughed at the edge of the sword and defied the point 
of the spear ; up to a monitor clad in complete steel. 

I saw at the same time, their musical instruments, 
from the tom-tom — that is, a hoop with a couple of 
strings of raw hide drawn across it — from that tom- 
tom, up to the instruments we have today, that make 
the common air blossom with melody. 

I saw, too, their paintings, from a daub of yellow 
mud, to the great works which now adorn the gal- 
leries of the world. I saw also their sculpture, from 
the rude god with four legs, a half dozen arms, sev- 
eral noses, and two or three rows of ears, and one lit- 
tle, contemptible, brainless head, up to the figures of 



120 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

today — to the marbles that genius has clad in such 
a personality that it seems almost impudent to touch 
them without an introduction. 

I saw their books — books written upon skins of 
wild beasts — upon shoulder-blades of sheep — 
books written upon leaves, upon bark, up to the splen- 
did volumes that enrich the librares of our day. When 
I speak of libraries, I think of the remark of Plato: 
"A house that has a library in it has a soul." 

7. I saw their implements of agriculture, from a 
crooked stick that was attached to the horn of an ox 
by some twisted straw, to the agricultural implements 
of this generation, that make it possible for a man to 
cultivate the soil without being an ignoramus. 

While looking upon these things I was forced to say 
that man advanced only as he mingled his thought 
with his labor, — only as he got into partnership 
with the forces of nature, — only as he learned to 
take advantage of his surroundings — only as he 
freed himself from the bondage of fear, — only as he 
depended upon himself — only as he lost confidence in 
the gods. 

I saw at the same time a row of human skulls, from 
the lowest skull that has been found, the Neander- 
thal skull — skulls from Central Africa, skulls from 
the Bushmen of Australia — skulls from the farthest 
isles of the Pacific sea — up to the best skulls of the 
last generation; — and I noticed that there was the 
same difference between those skulls that there was 
between the products of those skulls, and I said to my- 
self, "After all, it is a simple question of intellectual 
development." There was the same difference between 



THB UBBRTY OF MAN 121 

those skulls, the lowest and highest skulls, that there 
was between the dug-out and the man-of-war and the 
steamship, between the club and the Krupp gun, be- 
tween the yellow daub and the landscape, between the 
tom-tom and an opera by Verdi. 

The first and lowest skull in this row was the den 
in which crawled the base and meaner instincts of 
mankind, and the last was a temple in which dwelt 
joy, liberty, and love. 

It is all a question of brain, of intellectual develop- 
ment. 

If we are nearer free than were our fathers, it is 
because we have better heads upon the average, and 
more brains in them. 

8. Now, I ask you to be honest with me. It makes 
no difference to you what I believe, nor what I wish 
to prove. I simply ask you to be honest. Divest your 
minds, for a moment at least, of all religious preju- 
dice. Act, for a few moments, as though you were 
men and women. 

Suppose the king, if there was one, and the priest, 
if there was one, at the time this gentleman floated 
in the dug-out, and charmed his ears with the music 
of the tom-tom, had said: 'That dug-out is the best 
boat that ever can be built by man; the pattern of 
that came from on high, from the great god of storm 
and flood, and any man who says that he can improve 
it by putting a mast in it, with a sail upon it, is an in- 
fidel, and shall be burned at the stake ;" what, in your 
judgment — honor bright — would have been the ef- 
fect upon the circumnavigation of the globe? 

Suppose the king, if there was one, and the priest, 



122 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

if there was one — and I presume there was a priest, 
because it was a very ignorant age — suppose this 
king and priest had said: "That tom-tom is the most 
beautiful instrument of music of which any man can 
conceive; that is the kind of music they have in 
heaven; an angel sitting upon the edge of a fleecy 
cloud, golden in the setting sun, playing upon that 
tom-tom, became so enraptured, so entranced with her 
own music, that in a kind of ecstasy she dropped it — 
that is how we obtained it; and any man who says 
that it can be improved by putting a back and front 
to it, and four strings, and a bridge, and getting a bow 
of hair with rosin, is a blaspheming wretch, and shall 
die the death," — I ask you, what effect would that 
have had upon music? If that course had been pur- 
sued, would the human ears, in your judgment, ever 
have been enriched with the divine symphonies of 
Beethoven? 

Suppose the king, if there was one, and the priest, 
had said: "That crooked stick is the best plow that 
can be invented : the pattern of that plow was given 
to a pious farmer in a holy dream, and that twisted 
straw is the ne plus ultra of all twisted things, and 
any man who says he can make an improvement upon 
that plow, is an atheist;" what, in your judgment, 
would have been the effect upon the science of agricul- 
ture? 

But the people said, and the king and priest said: 
"We want better weapons with which to kill our fel- 
low-Christians ; we want better plows, better music, 
better paintings, and whoever will give us better weap- 
ons, and better music, better houses to live in, better 



THB LIBERTY OF MAX 123 

clothes,, we will robe him in wealth, and crown him 
with honor.*' Every incentive was held out to every 
human being to improve these things. That is the 
reason the club has been changed to a cannon, the 
dug-out to a steamship, the daub to a painting ; that is 
the reason that the piece of rough and broken stone 
finally became a glorified statue. 

9. You must not, however, forget that the gentle- 
man in the dug-out, the gentleman who was enrap- 
tured with the music of the tom-tom, and cultivated his 
land with a crooked stick had a religion of his own. 
That gentleman in the dug-out was orthodox. He was 
never troubled with doubts. He lived and died set- 
tled in his mind. He believed in hell ; and he thought 
he would be far happier in heaven if he could just 
lean over and see certain people who expressed doubts 
as to the truth of his creed, gently but everlastingly 
broiled and burned. 

It is a very sad and unhappy fact that this man has 
had a great many intellectual descendants. It is also 
an unhappy fact in nature, that the ignorant multi- 
ply much faster than the intellectual. This fellow in 
the dug-out believed in a personal devil. His devil 
had a cloven hoof, a long tail, armed with a fiery 
dart; and his devil breathed brimstone. This devil 
was at least the equal of God; not quite so stout but a 
little shrewder. And do you know there has not been 
a patentable improvement made upon that devil for 
six thousand years. 

This gentleman in the dug-out believed that God 
was a tyrant; that he would eternally damn the man 
who lived in accordance with his highest and grandest 



I2 4 THB DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

ideal. He believed that the earth was flat. He be- 
lieved in a literal, burning, seething hell of fire and 
sulphur. He had also his idea of politics ; and his 
doctrine was, might makes right. And it will take 
thousands of years before the world will reverse this 
doctrine, and believingly say, "Right makes might." 

All I ask is the same privilege to improve upon that 
gentleman's theology as upon his musical instrument; 
the same right to improve upon his politics as upon 
his dug-out. That is all. I ask for the human soul the 
same liberty in every direction. That is the only 
crime I have committed. I say, let us think. Let each 
one express his thought. Let us become investiga- 
tors, not followers, not cringers and crawlers. If there 
is in heaven an infinite being, he never will be satis- 
fied with the worship of cowards and hypocrites. Hon- 
est unbelief, honest infidelity, honest atheism, will be 
a perfume in heaven when pious hypocrisy, no matter 
how religious it may be outwardly, will be a stench. 

10. This is my doctrine: Give every other human 
being every right you claim for yourself. Keep your 
mind open to the influences of nature. Receive new 
thoughts with hospitality. Let us advance. 

The religionist of today wants the ship of his soul 
to lie at the wharf of orthodoxy and rot in the sun. 
He delights to hear the sails of old opinions flap 
against the masts of old creeds. He loves to see the 
joints and the sides open and gape in the sun, and 
it is a kind of bliss for him to repeat again and again : 
"Do not disturb my opinions. Do not unsettle my 
mind ; I have it all made up, and I want no infidelity. 
Let me go backward rather than forward." 



THE LIBERTY OF MAN 125 

As far as I am concerned I wish to be out on the 
high seas. I wish to take my chances with wind, and 
wave, and star. And I had rather go down in the 
glory and grandeur of the storm, than to rot in any 
orthodox harbor whatever. 

After all, we are improving from age to age. The 
most orthodox people in this country two hundred 
years ago would have been burned for the crime of 
heresy. The ministers who denounce me for express- 
ing my thought would have been in the Inquisition 
themselves. Where once burned and blazed the biv- 
ouac fires of the army of progress, now glow the al- 
tars of the church. The religionists of our time are 
occupying about the same ground occupied by heretics 
and infidels of one hundred years ago. The church 
has advanced in spite, as it were, of itself. It has fol- 
lowed the army of progress protesting and denounc- 
ing, and had to keep within protesting and denouncing 
distance. If the church had not made great progress I 
could not express my thoughts. 

Man, however, has advanced just exactly in the 
proportion with which he has mingled his thought with 
his labor. The sailor, without control of the wind and 
wave, knowing nothing or very little of the myste- 
rious currents and pulses of the sea, is superstitious. 
So also is the agriculturist, whose prosperity depends 
upon something he cannot control. But the mechanic, 
when a wheel refuses to turn, never thinks of drop- 
ping on his knees and asking the assistance of some 
divine power. He knows there is a reason. He knows 
that something is too large or too small ; that there is 
something wrong with his machine; and he goes to 



126 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

work and he makes it larger or smaller, here or there, 
until the wheel will turn. Now, just in proportion as 
man gets away from being, as it were, the slave of his 
surroundings, the serf of the elements, — of the heat, 
the frost, the snow, and the lightning, — just to the 
extent that he has gotten control of his own destiny, 
just to the extent that he has triumphed over the ob- 
stacles of nature, he has advanced physically and in- 
tellectually. As man develops, he places a greater 
value upon his own rights. Liberty becomes a grander 
and diviner thing. As he values his own rights, he be- 
gins to value the rights of others. And when all men 
give to all others all the rights they claim for them- 
selves, this world will be civilized. 

ii. A few years ago the people were afraid to ques- 
tion the king, afraid to question the priest, afraid to in- 
vestigate a creed, afraid to deny a book, afraid to de- 
nounce a dogma, afraid to reason, afraid to think. Be- 
fore wealth they bowed to the very earth, and in the 
presence of titles they became abject. All this is 
slowly but surely changing. We no longer bow to 
men simply because they are rich. Our fathers wor- 
shiped the golden calf. The worst you can say of an 
American now is, he worships the gold of the calf. 
Even the calf is beginning to see this distinction. 

It no longer satisfies the ambition of a great man 
to be a king or emperor. The last Napoleon was not 
satisfied with being emperor of the French. He was 
not satisfied with having a circlet of gold about his 
head. He wanted some evidence that he had some- 
thing of value within his head. So he wrote the life 
of Julius Caesar, that he might become a member of the 



THE LIBERTY OF MAN 127 

French Academy. The emperors, the kings, the 
popes, no longer tower above their fellows. Compare 
king William with the philosopher Haekel. The king 
is one of the anointed by the most high, as they claim — ■ 
one upon whose head has been poured the divine pe- 
troleum of authority. Compare this king with Haec- 
kel, who towers an intellectual colossus above the 
crowned mediocrity. Compare George Eliot with 
Queen Victoria. The Queen is clothed in garments 
given her by blind fortune and unreasoning chance, 
while George Eliot wears robes of glory woven in the 
loom of her own genius 

The world is beginning to pay homage to intellect, 
to genius, to heart. 

We have advanced. We have reaped the benefit of 
every sublime and heroic self-sacrifice, of every di- 
vine and brave act; and we should endeavor to hand 
the torch to the next generation, having added a little 
to the intensity and glory of the flame. 

12. When I think of how much this world has suf- 
fered; when I think of how long our fathers were 
slaves, of how they cringed and crawled at the foot of 
the throne, and in the dust of the altar, of how they 
abased themselves, of how abjectly they stood in the 
presence of superstition robed and crowned, I am 
amazed. 

This world has not been fit for a man to live in 
fifty years. It was not until the year 1808 that Great 
Britain abolished the slave trade. Up to that time hef 
judges, sitting upon the bench in the name of justice, 
her priests, occupying her pulpits, in the name of uni- 
versal love, owned stock in the slave ships, and lux- 



128 THE DBUVBRY OF A SPEECH 

uriated upon the profits of piracy and murder. It 
was not until the same year that the United States of 
America abolished the slave trade between this and 
other countries, but carefully preserved it as between 
the States. It was not until the 28th day of August, 
1833, that Great Britain abolished human slavery in 
her colonies ; and it was not until the 1st day of Janu- 
ary, 1863, that Abraham Lincoln, sustained by the sub- 
lime and heroic North, rendered our flag pure as the 
sky in which it floats. 

Abraham Lincoln was, in my judgment, in many 
respects, the grandest man ever President of the 
United States. Upon his monument these words 
should be written: "Here sleeps the only man in the 
history of the world, who, having been clothed with 
almost absolute power, never abused it, except upon 
the side of mercy." 

Think how long we clung to the institution of hu- 
man slavery, how long lashes upon the naked back 
were a legal tender for labor performed. Think of it 
The pulpit of this country deliberately and willingly, 
for a hundred years, turned the cross of Christ into 
a whipping post. 

With every drop of my blood I hate and execrate 
every form of tyranny, every form of slavery. I hate 
dictation. I love liberty. 

13. What do I mean by liberty? By physical lib- 
erty I mean the right to do anything which does not 
interfere with the happiness of another. By intellec- 
tual liberty I mean the right to think right and the 
right to think wrong. Thought is the means by which 
we endeavor to arrive at truth. If we know the truth 



THE LIBERTY OP MAN 129 

already, we need not think. All that can be required 
is honesty of purpose. You ask my opinion about any- 
thing; I examine it honestly, and when my mind is 
made up, what should I tell you? Should I tell you 
my real thought? What should I do? There is a 
book put in my hands. I am told this is the Koran ; it 
was written by inspiration. I read it, and when I 
get through, suppose that I think in my heart and in 
my brain, that it is utterly untrue, and you then ask 
me, what do you think? Now, admitting that I live 
in Turkey, and have no chance to get any office un- 
less I am on the side of the Koran, what should I 
say ? Should I make a clean breast and say, that upon 
my honor I do not believe it ? What would you think 
then of my fellow-citizens if they said : "That man is 
dangerous, he is dishonest." 

Supose I read the book called the Bible, and when I 
get through I make up my mind that it was written 
by men. A minister asks me, "Did you read the Bi- 
ble ?" I answer, that I did. "Do you think it divinely 
inspired?" What should I reply? Should I say to 
myself, "If I deny the inspiration of the Scriptures, 
the people will never clothe me with power." What 
ought I to answer? Ought I not to say like a man: 
"I have read it; I do not believe it." Should I not 
give the real transcript of my mind? Or should I 
turn hypocrite and pretend what I do not feel, and 
hate myself forever after for being a cringing coward. 
For my part I would rather a man would tell me what 
he honestly thinks. I would rather he would preserve 
his manhood. I had a thousand times rather be a 
manly unbeliever than an unmanly believer. And if 



1 3 o THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

there is a judgment day, a time when all will stand 
before some supreme being, I believe I will stand 
higher, and stand a better chance of getting my case 
decided in my favor, than any man sneaking through 
life pretending to believe what he does not. 

I have made up my mind to say my say. I shall do 
it kindly, distinctly; but I am going to do it. I know 
there are thousands of men who substantially agree 
with me, but who are not in a condition to express 
their thoughts. They are poor ; they are in business ; 
and they know that should they tell their honest 
thought, persons will refuse to patronize them — to 
trade with them ; they wish to get bread for their lit- 
tle children ; they wish to take care of their wives ; they 
wish to have homes and the comforts of life. Every 
such person is a certificate of the meanness of the com- 
munity in which he resides. And yet I do not blame 
these people for not expressing their thought. I say 
to them : "Keep your ideas to yourselves ; feed and 
clothe the ones you love; I will do your talking for 
you. The church can not touch, can not crush, can not 
starve, can not stop nor stay me ; I will express your 
thoughts." 

14. As an excuse for tyranny, as a justification of 
slavery, the church has taught that man is totally 
depraved. Of the truth of that doctrine, the church 
has furnished the only evidence there is. The truth 
is, we are both good and bad. The worst are capable 
of some good deeds, and the best are capable of bad. 
The lowest can rise, and the highest may fall. That 
mankind can be divided into two great classes, sin- 
ners and saints, is an utter falsehood. In times of 



THE LIBERTY OP WOMAN 131 

great disaster, called it may be, by the despairing 
voices of women, men, denounced by the church as 
totally depraved, rush to death as to a festival. By such 
men, deeds are done so filled with self-sacrifice and 
generous daring, that millions pay to them the tribute, 
not only of admiration, but of tears. Above all creeds, 
above all religions, after all, is that divine thing, — 
Humanity; and now and then in shipwreck on the 
wide, wild sea, or 'mid the rocks and breakers of 
some cruel shore, or where the serpents of flame 
writhe and hiss, some glorious heart, some chivalric 
soul does a deed that glitters like a star, and gives the 
lie to all the dogmas of superstition. All these fright- 
ful doctrines have been used to degrade and to enslave 
mankind. 

Away, forever away with the creeds and books and 
forms and laws and religions that take from the soul 
liberty and reason. Down with the idea that thought 
is dangerous ! Perish the infamous doctrine that 
man can have property in man. Let us resent with 
indignation every effort to put a chain upon our 
minds. If there is no God; certainly we should not 
bow and cringe and crawl. If there is a God, there 
should be no slaves. 

The Liberty of Woman 

15. Women have been the slaves of slaves; and in 
my judgment it took millions of ages for woman to 
come from the condition of abject slavery up to the 
institution of marriage. Let me say right here, that 
I regard marriage as the holiest institution among 
men. Without the fireside there is no human ad- 



132 



THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 



vancement; without the family relation there is no 
life worth living. Every good government is made 
up of good families. The unit of good government 
is the family, and anything that tends to destroy the 
family is perfectly devilish and infamous. I believe in 
marriage, and I hold in utter contempt the opinions 
of those long-haired men and short-haired women who 
denounce the institution of marriage. 

The grandest ambition that any man can possibly 
have, is to so live, and so improve himself in heart 
and brain, as to be worthy of the love of some splen- 
did woman; and the grandest ambition of any girl is 
to make herself worthy of the love and adoration of 
some magnificent man. That is my idea. There is no 
success in life without love and marriage. You had 
better be the emperor of one loving and tender heart, 
and she the empress of yours, than to be king of the 
world. The man who has really won the love of one 
good woman in this world, I do not care if he dies in 
the ditch a beggar, his life has been a success. 

I say it took millions of years to come from the con- 
dition of abject slavery up to the condition of mar- 
riage. Ladies, the ornaments you wear upon your 
persons tonight are but the souvenirs of your mother's 
bondage. The chains around your necks, and the 
bracelets clasped upon your white arms by the thrilled 
hand of love, have been changed by the wand of civ- 
ilization from iron to shining, glittering gold. 

But nearly every religion has accounted for all the 
devilment in this world by the crime of woman. What 
a gallant thing that is ! And if it is true, I had rather 



THE LIBERTY OF WOMAN 133 

live with the woman I love in a world full of trouble, 
than to live in heaven with nobody but men. 

I read in a book — and I will say now that I can- 
not give the exact language, as my memory does not 
retain the words, but I can give the substance — I 
read in a book that the Supreme Being concluded to 
make a world and one man; that he took some noth- 
ing and made a world and one man, and put this man 
in a garden. In a little while he noticed that the man 
got lonesome; that he wandered around as if he was 
waiting for a train. There was nothing to interest 
him ; no news ; no papers ; no politics ; no policy ; and, 
as the devil had not yet made his appearance, there 
was no chance for reconciliation; not even for civil 
service reform. Well, he wandered about the gar- 
den in this condition, until finally the Supreme Being 
made up his mind to make him a companion. 

16. Having used up all the nothing he originally 
took in making the world and one man, he had to take 
a part of the man to start a woman with. So he 
caused a sleep to fall on this man — now understand 
me, I do not say this story is true. After the sleep 
fell upon this man, the Supreme Being took a rib, or 
as the French would call it, a cutlet, out of this man, 
and from that he made a woman. And considering 
the amount of raw material used, I look upon it as the 
most successful job ever performed. Well, after he 
got the woman done, she was brought to the man ; not 
to see how she liked him, but to see how he liked her. 
He liked her, and they started housekeeping ; and they 
were told of certain things they might do and of one 



134 ?#£ DBUVERY OF A SPBBCH 

thing they could not do — and of course they did it. I 
would have done it in fifteen minutes, and I know it. 
There wouldn't have been an apple on that tree half 
an hour from date, and the limbs would have been 
full of clubs. And then they were turned out of the 
park and extra policemen were put on to keep them 
from getting back. 

Devilment commenced. The mumps, and the 
measles, and the whooping-cough, and the scarlet fever 
started in their race for man. They began to have the 
toothache, roses began to have thorns, snakes began 
to have poisoned teeth, and people began to divide 
about religion and politics, and the world has been full 
of trouble from that day to this. 

Nearly all of the religions of this world account for 
the existence of evil by such a story as that! 

I read in another book what appeared to be an 
account of the same transaction. It was written 
about four thousand years before the other. All com- 
mentators agree that the one that was written last was 
the original, and that the one that was written first 
was copied from the one that was written last. But I 
would advise you all not to allow your creed to be dis- 
turbed by a little matter of four or five thousand 
years. In this other story Brahma made up his mind 
to make the world and a man and woman. He made 
the world, and he made the man and then the woman, 
and put them on the island of Ceylon. According to 
the account it was the most beautiful island of which 
man can conceive. Such birds, such songs, such 
flowers and such verdure ! And the branches of the 
trees were so arranged that when the wind swept 



THE LIBERTY OF WOMAN 135 

through them every tree was a thousand iEolian 
harps. 

Brahma, when he put them there, said: "Let them 
have a period of courtship, for it is my desire and 
will that true love should forever precede marriage." 
When I read that, it was so much more beautiful and 
lofty than the other, that I said to myself, "If either 
one of these stories ever turns out to be true, I hope 
it will be this one." 

17. Then they had their courtship, with the nightin- 
gale singing, and the stars shining, and the flowers 
blooming, and they fell in love. Imagine that court- 
ship ! No prospective fathers nor mothers-in-law ; 
no prying and gossiping neighbors ; nobody to say, 
"Young man, how do you expect to support her?" 
Nothing of that kind. They were married by the Su- 
preme Brahma, and he said to them: "Remain here; 
you must never leave this island." Well, after a little 
while the man — and his name was Adami, and the 
woman's name was Heva — said to Heva: "I believe 
I'll look about a little." He went to the northern ex- 
tremity of the island where there was a little narrow 
neck of land connecting it with the mainland, and 
the devil, who is always playing pranks with us, pro- 
duced a mirage, and when he looked over to the main- 
land, such hills and vales, such dells and dales, such 
mountains crowned with snow, such cataracts clad in 
bows of glory did he see there, that he went back and 
told Heva: "The country over there is a thousand 
times better than this; let us migrate." She, like every 
other woman that ever lived, said : "Let well enough 
alone ; we have all we want ; let us stay here." But he 



136 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

said, "No, let us go ;" so she followed him, and when 
they came to this narrow neck of land, he took her 
on his hack like a gentleman, and carried her over. 
But the moment they got over they heard a crash, and, 
looking back, discovered that this narrow neck of 
land had fallen into the sea. The mirage had disap- 
peared, and there were naught but rocks and sand; 
and then the Supreme Brahma cursed them both to 
the lowest hell. 

Then it was that the man spoke, — and I have 
liked him ever since for it — "Curse me, but curse 
not her, it was not her fault, it was mine." 

That's the kind of man to start a world with. 

The Supreme Brahma said: "I will save her, but 
not thee." And then she spoke out of her fullness of 
love, out of a heart in which there was love enough 
to make all her daughters rich in holy affection, and 
said: "If thou wilt not spare him, spare neither me; 
I do not wish to live without him; I love him." Then 
the Supreme Brahma said — and I have liked him 
ever since I read it — "I will spare you both and 
watch over you and your children forever." 

Honor bright, is not that the better and grander 
story? 

1 8. And from that same book I want to show you 
what ideas some of these miserable heathen had; the 
heathen we are trying to convert. We send mission- 
aries over yonder to convert heathen there, and we 
send soldiers out on the plains to kill heathen here. 
If we can convert the heathen, why not convert those 
nearest home ? Why not convert those we can get at ? 
Why not convert those who have the immense advan- 






THE LIBBRTY OF WOMAN 137 

tage of the example of the average pioneer? But to 
show you the men we are trying to convert: In this 
book it says : "Man is strength, woman is beauty ; man 
is courage, woman is love. When the one man loves 
the one woman and the one woman loves the one 
man, the very angels leave heaven and come and sit 
in that house and sing for joy." 

They are the men we are converting. Think of it ! 
I tell you, when I read these things, I say that love 
is not of any country ; nobility does not belong exclu- 
sively to any race, and through all the ages, there have 
been a few great and tender souls blossoming in love 
and pity. 

In my judgment, the woman is the equal of the 
man. She has all the rights I have and one more, 
and that is the right to be protected. That is my 
doctrine. You are married; try and make the woman 
you love happy. Whoever marries simply for him- 
self will make a mistake ; but whoever loves a woman 
so well that he says "I will make her happy," makes 
no mistake. And so with the woman who says, "I 
will make him happy." There is only one way to be 
happy, and that is to make somebody else so, and you 
cannot be happy by going cross lots; you have got to 
go the regular turnpike road. 

If there is any man I detest, it is the man who thinks 
he is the head of a family — the man who thinks he 
is "boss !" The fellow in the dug-out used that word 
"boss" ; that was one of his favorite expressions. 

Imagine a young man and a young woman court- 
ing, walking out in the moonlight, and the nightinglae 
singing a song of pain and love, as though the thorn 



i 3 8 THH DtiUVHRY OP A SPBBCH 

touched her heart — imagine them stopping there in 
the moonlight and starlight and song, and saying, 
"Now, here, let us settle who is 'boss !' " I tell you it 
is an infamous word and an infamous feeling — I 
abhor a man who is "boss", who is going to govern 
in his family, and when he speaks orders all the rest 
to be still as some mighty idea is about to be launched 
from his mouth. Do you know I dislike this man un- 
speakably ? 

19. I hate above all things a cross man. What 
right has he to murder the sunshine of a day? What 
right has he to assassinate the joy of life? When you 
go home you ought to go like a ray of light — so 
that it will, even in the night, burst out of the doors 
and windows and illuminate the darkness. Some 
men think their mighty brains have been in a turmoil ; 
they have been thinking about who will be alderman 
from the fifth ward; they have been thinking about 
politics ; great and mighty questions have been engag- 
ing their minds ; they have bought calico at five cents 
or six, and want to sell it for seven. Think of the in- 
tellectual strain that must have been upon that man, 
and when he gets home everybody else in the house 
must look out for his comfort. A woman who has 
only taken care of five or six children, and one or two 
of them sick, has been nursing them and singing to 
them, and trying to make one yard of cloth do the 
work of two, she, of course, is fresh and fine and 
ready to wait upon this gentleman — the head of the 
family — the boss ! 

Do you know another thing? I despise a stingy 
man. I do not see how it is possible for a man to die 



THB LIBERTY OP WOMAN 139 

worth fifty million of dollars, or ten million of dol- 
lars, in a city full of want, when he meets almost 
every day the withered hand of beggary and the white 
lips of famine. How a man can withstand all that, 
and hold in the clutch of his greed twenty or thirty 
million of dollars, is past my comprehension. I do 
not see how he can do it. I should not think he could 
do it any more than he could keep a pile of lumber 
on the beach, where hundreds and thousands of men 
were drowning in the sea. 

20. Do you know that I have known men who 
would trust their wives with their hearts and their 
honor but not with their pocketbook; not with a dol- 
lar. When I see a man of that kind, I always think 
he knows which of these articles is the most valuable. 
Think of making your wife a beggar ! Think of her 
having to ask you every day for a dollar, or for two 
dollars or fifty cents ! "What did you do with that dol- 
lar I gave you last week?" Think of having a wife that 
is afraid of you! What kind of children do you ex- 
pect to have with a beggar and a coward for their 
mother? Oh, I tell you if you have but a dollar in the 
world, and you have got to spend it, spend it like a 
king ; spend it as though it were a dry leaf and you the 
owner of unbounded forests ! That's the way to spend 
it ! I had rather be a beggar and spend my last dollar 
like a king, than be a king and spend my money like 
a beggar! If it has got to go, let it go! 

Get the best you can for your family — try to 
look as well as you can yourself. When you used to 
go courting, how elegantly you looked ! Ah, your eye 
was bright, your step was light, and you looked like a 



l4 o THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

prince. Do you know that it is insufferable egotism in 
you to suppose a woman is going to love you always 
looking as slovenly as you can ! Think of it ! Any 
good woman on earth will be true to you forever when 
you do your level best. 

Some people tell me, "Your doctrine about loving, 
and wives, and all that, is splendid for the rich, but it 
won't do for the poor." I tell you tonight there is 
more love in the homes of the poor than in the palaces 
of the rich. The meanest hut with love in it is a 
palace fit for the gods, and a palace without love is a 
den only fit for wild beasts. That is my doctrine! 
You cannot be so poor that you cannot help somebody. 
Good nature is the cheapest commodity in the world; 
and love is the only thing that will pay ten per cent, 
to borrower and lender both. Do not tell me that you 
have got to be rich ! We have a false standard of 
greatness in the United States. We think here that a 
man must be great, that he must be notorious ; that he 
must be extremely wealthy, or that his name must be 
upon the putrid lips of rumor. It is all a mistake. It 
is not necessary to be rich or to be great, or to be pow- 
erful, to' be happy. The happy man is the successful 
man. 

Happiness is the legal tender of the soul. 

Joy is wealth. 

21. A little while ago, I stood by the grave of the 
old Napoleon — a magnificent tomb of gilt and gold, 
fit almost for a dead deity — and gazed upon the sar- 
cophagus of rare and nameless marble, where rest at 
last the ashes of that restless man. I leaned over the 



THB LIBERTY OF WOMAN ,141 

balustrade and thought about the career of the great- 
est soldier of the modern world. 

I saw him walking upon the banks of the Seine, 
contemplating suicide. I saw him at Toulon — I saw 
him putting down the mob in the streets of Paris — I 
saw him at the head of the army of Italy — I saw 
him crossing the bridge of Lodi with the tri-color in 
his hand — I saw him in Egypt in the shadows of the 
pyramids — I saw him conquer the Alps and mingle 
the eagles of France with the eagles of the crags. I 
saw him at Marengo — at Ulm and Austerlitz. I saw 
him in Russia, where the infantry of the snow and 
the cavalry of the wild blast scattered his legions like 
winter's withered leaves. I saw him at Leipsic in de- 
feat and disaster — driven by a million bayonets back 
upon Paris — clutched like a wild beast — banished 
to Elba. I saw him escape and retake an empire by 
the force of his genius. I saw him upon the frightful 
field of Waterloo, where Chance and Fate combined to 
wreck the fortunes of their former king. And I saw 
him at St. Helena, with his hands crossed behind him, 
gazing out upon the sad and solemn sea. 

I thought of the orphans and widows he had made — 
of the tears that had been shed for his glory, and of 
the only woman who ever loved him, pushed from his 
heart by the cold hand of ambition. And I said I 
would rather have been a French peasant and worn 
wooden shoes. I would rather have lived in a hut 
with a vine growing over the door, and the grapes 
growing purple in the kisses of the autumn sun. I 
would rather have been that poor peasant with my 



i 4 2 THE DELIVERY OP A SPEECH 

loving wife by my side, knitting as the day died out 
of the sky — with my children upon my knees and 
their arms about me — I would rather have been that 
man and gone down to the tongueless silence of the 
dreamless dust, than to have been that imperial im- 
personation of force and murder, known as "Napo- 
leon the Great". 

It is not necessary to be great to be happy; it is 
not necessary to be rich to be just and generous and 
to have a heart filled with divine affection. No matter 
whether you are rich or poor, treat your wife as 
though she were a splendid flower, and she will fill 
your life with perfume and with joy. 

. 22. And do you know, it is a splendid thing to 
think that the woman you really love will never grow 
old to you. Through the wrinkles of time, through 
the mask of years, if you really love her, you will al- 
ways see the face you loved and won. And a woman 
who really loves a man does not see that he grows old ; 
he is not decrepit to her; he does not tremble; he is 
not old ; she always sees the same gallant gentleman 
who won her hand and heart. I like to think of it in 
that way. I like to think that love is eternal. And to 
love in that way and then go down the hill of life to- 
gether, and as you go down, hear, perhaps, the laugh- 
ter of grandchildren, while the birds of joy and love 
sing once more in the leafless branches of the tree of 
age. 

I believe in the fireside. I believe in the democracy 
of home. I believe in the republicanism of the fam- 
ily. I believe in liberty, equality and love. 



THE LIBERTY OF CHILDREN 143 

The: Liberty of Children 

If women have been slaves, what shall I say of 
children ; of the little children in alleys and sub-cel- 
lars; the little children who turn pale when they hear 
their fathers' footsteps ; little children who run away 
when they only hear their names called by the lips of 
a mother; little children — the children of poverty, 
the children of crime, the children of brutality, wher- 
ever they are — flotsam and jetsam upon the wild, 
mad sea of life — my heart goes out to them, one 
and all. 

I tell you the children have the same rights that we 
have, and we ought to treat them as though they were 
human beings. They should be reared with love, with 
kindness, with tenderness, and not with brutality. 
That is my idea of children. 

When your little child tells a lie, do not rush at him 
as though the world were about to go into bank- 
ruptcy. Be honest with him. A tyrant father will 
have liars for his children ; do you know that ? A lie 
is born of tyranny upon the one hand and weakness 
upon the other, and when you rush at a poor little boy 
with a club in your hand, of course he lies. 

I thank thee, Mother Nature, that thou hast put in- 
genuity enough in the brain of a child, when attacked 
by a brutal parent, to throw up a little breastwork in 
the shape of a lie. 

23. When one of your children tells a lie, be honest 
with him; tell him that you have told hundreds of 
them yourself. Tell him it is not the best way ; that 
you have tried it. Tell him as the man did in Maine 
when his boy left home: "Jo nn > honesty is the best 



1 44 THB DBLIVBRY OF A SPBBCH 

policy; I have tried both." Be honest with him. Sup- 
pose a man as much larger than you as you are larger 
than a child five years old, should come at you with 
a liberty pole in his hand, and in a voice of thunder 
shout, "Who broke that plate?" There is not a soli- 
tary one of you who would not swear you never saw 
it, or that it was cracked when you got it. Why not 
be honest with these children? Just imagine a man 
who deals in stocks whipping his boy for putting false 
rumors afloat ! Think of a lawyer beating his own 
flesh and blood for evading the truth when he makes 
half of his own living that way! Think of a minis- 
ter punishing his child for not telling all he thinks ! 
Just think of it ! 

When your child commits a wrong, take it in your 
arms ; let it feel your heart beat against its heart ; let 
the child know that you really and truly and sincerely 
love it. Yet some Christians, good Christians, when a 
child commits a fault, drive it from the door and say : 
"Never do you darken this house again." Think of 
that! And then these same people will get down on 
their knees and ask God to take care of the child they 
have driven from home. I will never ask God to take 
care of my children unless I am doing my level best 
in that same direction. 

But I will tell you what I say to my children : "Go 
where you will ; commit what crime you may ; fall to 
what depth of degradation you may; you can never 
commit any crime that will shut my door, my arms, 
or my heart to you. As long as I live you shall have 
one sincere friend." 

Do you know that I have seen some people who 



THE LIBERTY OF CHILDREN 145 

acted as though they thought that when the Savior 
said "Suffer little children to come unto me, for of 
such is the kingdom of heaven," he had a raw-hide 
under his mantle, and made that remark simply to get 
the children within striking distance? 

I do not believe in the government of the lash. If 
any one of you ever expects to whip your children 
again, I want you to have a photograph taken of your- 
self when you are in the act, with your face red with 
vulgar anger, and the face of the little child, with 
eyes swimming in tears and the little chin dimpled 
with fear, like a piece of water struck by a sudden 
cold wind. Have the picture taken. If that little 
child should die, I cannot think of a sweeter way to 
spend an autumn afternoon than to go out to the 
cemetery, when the maples are clad in tender gold, and 
little scarlet runners are coming, like poems of re- 
gret, from the sad heart of the earth — and sit down 
upon the grave and look at that photograph, and think 
of the flesh now dust that you beat. I tell you it is 
wrong; it is no way to raise children! Make your 
home happy. Be honest with them. Divide fairly 
with them in everything. 

24. Give them a little liberty and love, and you can 
not drive them out of your house. They will want 
to stay there. Make home pleasant. Let them play 
any game they wish. Do not be so foolish as to say : 
"You may roll balls on the ground, but you must not 
roll them on a green cloth. You may knock them 
with a mallet, but you must not push them with a 
cue. You may play with little pieces of paper which 
have 'authors' written on them, but you must not 



I 4 6 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

have 'cards'." Think of it ! "You may go to a min- 
strel show where people blacken themselves and imi- 
tate humanity below them, but you must not go to a 
theatre and see the characters created by immortal 
genius put upon the stage." Why ? Well, I can't think 
of any reason in the world except "minstrel" is a 
word of two syllables, and "theatre" has three. 

Let children have some daylight at home if you 
want to keep them there, and do not commence at the 
cradle and shout "Don't !" "Don't !" "Stop !" That is 
nearly all that is said to a child from the cradle un- 
til he is twenty-one years old, and when he comes of 
age other people begin saying "Don't!" And the 
church says "Don't !" and the party he belongs to says 
"Don't !" 

I despise that way of going through this world. Let 
us have liberty — just a little. Call me infidel, call 
me atheist, call me what you will, I intend so to treat 
my children, that they can come to my grave and 
truthfully say : "He who sleeps here never gave us a 
moment of pain. From his lips, now dust, never 
came to us an unkind word." 

People justify all kinds of tyranny toward children 
upon the ground that they are totally depraved. At the 
bottom of ages of cruelty lies this infamous doctrine of 
total depravity. Religion contemplates a child as a 
living crime — heir to an infinite curse — doomed to 
eternal fire. 

25. In the olden time, they thought some days were 
too good for a child to enjoy himself. When I was 
a boy Sunday was considered altogether too holy to 
be happy in. Sunday used to commence then when 



THE LIBERTY OF CHILDREN 147 

the sun went down on Saturday night. We com- 
menced at that time for the purpose of getting a good 
ready, and when the sun fell below the horizon on 
Saturday evening, there was a darkness fell upon the 
house ten thousand times deeper than that of night. 
Nobody said a pleasant word; nobody laughed; no- 
body smiled; the child that looked the sickest was 
regarded as the most pious. That night you could 
not even crack hickory nuts. If you were caught chew- 
ing gum it was only another evidence of the total de- 
pravity of the human heart. It was an exceedingly 
solemn night. Dyspepsia was in the very air you 
breathed. Everybody looked sad and mournful. I 
have noticed all my life that many people think they 
have religion when they are troubled with dyspepsia. 
If there could be found an absolute specific for that 
disease, it would be the hardest blow the church has 
ever received. 

On Sunday morning the solemnity had simply in- 
creased. Then we went to church. The minister was 
in a pulpit about twenty feet high, with a little sound- 
ing-board above him, and he commenced at "firstly" 
and went on and on and on to about "twenty-thirdly". 
Then he made a few remarks by way of application; 
and then took a general view of the subject, and in 
about two hours reached the last chapter in Revela- 
tion. 

In those days, no matter how cold the weather was, 
there was no fire in the church. It was thought to be 
a kind of sin to be comfortable while you were thank- 
ing God. The first church that ever had a stove in it 
in New England, divided on that account. So the first 



148 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

church in which they sang by note, was torn in frag- 
ments. 

After the sermon we had an intermission. Then 
came the catechism with the chief end of man. We 
went through with that. We sat in a row with our 
feet coming in about six inches of the floor. The min- 
ister asked us if we knew that we all deserved to go to 
hell, and we all answered "Yes". Then we were asked 
if we would be willing to go to hell if it was God's 
will, and every little liar shouted "Yes". Then the 
same sermon was preached once more, commencing 
at the other end and going back. After that, we started 
for home, sad and solemn — overpowered with the 
wisdom displayed in the scheme of the atonement. 
When we got home, if we had been good boys, and 
the weather was warm, sometimes they would take us 
out to the graveyard to cheer us up a little. It did 
cheer me. When I looked at the sunken tombs and 
the leaning stones, and read the half-effaced inscrip- 
tions through the moss of silence and forgetfulness, it 
was a great comfort. The reflection came to my mind 
that the observance of the Sabbath could not last al- 
ways. Sometimes they would sing that beautiful 
hymn in which occur these cheerful lines: 

"Where congregations ne'er break up, 
And Sabbaths never end." 

These lines, I think, prejudiced me a little against 
even heaven. 

26. Then we had good books that we read on Sun- 
days by way of keeping us happy and contented. There 
were Milners' "History of the Waldenses", Baxter's 



THB LIBERTY OF CHILDREN i 49 

"Call to the Unconverted", Yahn's "Archaeology of 
the Jews", and Jenkyns' "On the Atonement". I used 
to read Jenkyns' "On the Atonement". I have often 
thought that an atonement would have to be exceed- 
ingly broad in its provisions to cover the case of a 
man who would write a book like that for a boy. 

But at last the Sunday wore away, and the moment 
the sun went down we were free. Between three and 
four o'clock we would go out to see how the sun was 
coming on. Sometimes it seemed to me that it was 
stopping from pure meanness. But finally it went 
down. It had to. And when the last rim of light sank 
below the horizon, off would go our caps, and we 
would give three cheers for liberty once more. 

Sabbaths used to be prisons. Every Sunday was a 
Bastile. Every Christian was a kind of turnkey, and 
every child was a prisoner, — a convict. In that dun- 
geon, a smile was a crime. 

It was thought wrong for a child to laugh upon 
this holy day. Think of that! 

A little child would go out into the garden, and 
there would be a tree laden with blossoms, and the 
little fellow would lean against it, and there would 
be a bird on one of the boughs, singing and swinging, 
and thinking about four little speckled eggs, warmed 
by the breast of its mate, — singing and swinging, 
and the music in happy waves rippling out of its tiny 
throat, and the flowers blossoming, the air filled with 
perfume and the great white clouds floating in the 
sky, and the little boy would lean up against that tree 
and think about hell and the worm that never dies. 

I have heard them preach, when I sat in the pew 



1 5 o THE DBUVBRY OF A SPEHCH 

and my feet did not touch the floor, about the final 
home of the unconverted. In order to impress upon 
the children the length of time they would probably 
stay if they settled in that country, the preacher would 
frequently give us the following illustration: "Sup- 
pose that once in a billion years a bird should come 
from some far-distant planet, and carry off in its little 
bill a grain of sand, a time would finally come when 
the last atom composing this earth would be carried 
away; and when this last atom was taken, it would 
not even be sun up in hell." Think of such an infam- 
ous doctrine being taught to children! 

2J. The laugh of a child will make the holiest day 
more sacred still. Strike with hand of fire, O weird 
musician, thy harp strung with Apollo's golden hair; 
fill the vast cathedral aisles with symphonies sweet 
and dim, deft toucher of the organ keys ; blow, bu- 
gler, blow, until thy silver notes do touch and kiss the 
moonlit waves, and charm the lovers wandering 'mid 
the vine-clad hills. But know, your sweetest strains are 
discords all, compared with childhood's happy laugh — 
the laugh that fills the eyes with light and every heart 
with joy. O rippling river of laughter, thou art the 
blessed boundary line between the beasts and men; 
and every wayward wave of thine doth drown some 
fretful fiend of care. O Laughter, rose-lipped daugh- 
ter of Joy, there are dimples enough in thy cheeks to 
catch and hold and glorify all the tears of grief. 

And yet the minds of children have been polluted 
by this infamous doctrine of eternal punishment. I de- 
nounce it today as a doctrine, the infamy of which no 
ianguage is sufficient to' express. 



THE LIBERTY OF CHILDREN 151 

Where did that doctrine of eternal punishment for 
men and women and children come from? It came 
from the low and beastly skull of that wretch in the 
dug-out. Where did he get it? It was a souvenir 
from the animals. The doctrine of eternal punish- 
ment was born in the glittering eyes of snakes — 
snakes that hung in fearful coils watching for their 
prey. It was born of the howl and bark and growl of 
wild beasts. It was born of the grin of hyenas and of 
the depraved chatter of unclean baboons. I despise it 
with every drop of my blood. Tell me there is a 
God in the serene heavens that will damn his children 
for the expression of an honest belief ! More men 
have died in their sins, judged by your orthodox 
creeds, than there are leaves on all the forests in the 
wide world ten thousand times over. Tell me these 
men are in hell ; that these men are in torment ; that 
these children are in eternal pain, and that they are 
to be punished forever and forever! I denounce this 
doctrine as the most infamous of lies. 

28. When the great ship containing the hopes and 
aspirations of the world, when the great ship freighted 
with mankind goes down in the night of death, chaos 
and disaster, I am willing to go down with the ship. I 
will not be guilty of the ineffable meanness of pad- 
dling away in some orthodox canoe. I will go down 
with the ship, with those who love me, and with those 
whom I have loved. If there is a God who will damn 
his children forever, I would rather go to hell than to 
go to heaven and keep the society of such an infam- 
out tyrant. I make my choice now. I despise that 
doctrine. It has covered the cheeks of this world with 



152 



THE DBUVERY OF A SPEECH 



tears. It has polluted the hearts of children, and 
poisoned the imaginations of men. It has been a con- 
stant pain, a perpetual terror to every good man and 
woman and child. It has filled the good with horror 
and with fear; but it has no effect upon the in- 
famous and base. It has wrung the hearts of the 
tender ; it has furrowed the cheeks of the good. This 
doctrine should be preached again. What right have 
you, sir, Mr. clergyman, you, minister of the gos- 
pel, to stand at the portals of the tomb, at the vesti- 
bule of eternity, and fill the future with horror and 
with fear ? I do not believe this doctrine : neither do 
you. If you did, you could not sleep one moment. Any 
man who believes it, and has within his breast a de- 
cent, throbbing heart, will go insane. A man who 
believes that doctrine and does not go insane has the 
heart of a snake and the conscience of a hyena. 

Jonathan Edwards, the dear old soul, who, if his 
doctrine is true, is now in heaven rubbing his holy 
hands with glee, as he hears the cries of the damned, 
preached this doctrine; and he said: "Can the believ- 
ing husband in heaven be happy with his unbelieving 
wife in hell? Can the believing father in heaven be 
happy with his unbelieving children in hell? Can the 
loving wife in heaven be happy with her unbelieving 
husband in hell ?" And he replies : "I tell you, yea. 
Such will be their sense of justice, that it will increase 
rather than diminish their bliss." There is no wild 
beast in the jungles of Africa whose reputation would 
not be tarnished by the expression of such a doctrine. 

29. These doctrines have been taught in the name 
of religion, in the name of universal forgiveness, in 



THE LIBERTY OF CHILDREN 153 

the name of infinite love and charity. Do not, I pray 
you, soil the minds of your children with this dogma. 
Let them read for themselves ; let them think for 
themselves. 

Do not treat your children like orthodox posts to 
be set in a row. Treat them like trees that need light 
and sun and air. Be fair and honest with them; give 
them a chance. Recollect that their rights are equal 
to yours. Do not have it in your mind that you must 
govern them; that they must obey. Throw away for- 
ever the idea of master and slave. 

In old times they used to make the children go to 
bed when they were not sleepy, and get up when they 
were sleepy. I say let them go to bed when they are 
sleepy, and get up when they are not sleepy. 

But you say, this doctrine will do for the rich but 
not for the poor. Well, if the poor have to waken their 
children early in the morning it is as easy to wake 
them with a kiss as with a blow. Give your children 
freedom; let them preserve their individuality. Let 
your children eat what they desire, and commence at 
the end of a dinner they like. That is their business 
and not yours. They know what they wish to eat. If 
they are given their liberty from the first, they know 
what they want better than any doctor in the world can 
prescribe. Do you know that all the improvement 
that has ever been made in the practice of medicine 
has been made by the recklessness of patients and not 
by the doctors? For thousands and thousands of 
years the doctors would not let a man suffering from 
fever have a drop of water. Water they looked upon 
as poison. But every now and then some man got 



1 5 4 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

reckless and said, "I had rather die than not to slake 
my thirst." Then he would drink two or three quarts 
of water and get well. And when the doctor was 
told of what the patient had done, he expressed great 
surprise that he was still alive, and complimented his 
constitution upon being able to bear such a frightful 
strain. The reckless men, however, kept on drinking 
the water, and persisted in getting well. And finally 
the doctors said: "In a fever, water is the very best 
thing you can take." So, I have more confidence in 
the voice of nature about such things than I have in 
the conclusions of the medical schools. 

30. Let your children have freedom and they will 
fall into your ways ; they will do substantially as you 
do; but if you try to make them, there is some mag- 
nificent, splendid thing in the human heart that re- 
fuses to be driven. And do you know that it is the 
luckiest thing that ever happened for this world, that 
people are that way. What would have become of 
the people five hundred years ago if they had followed 
strictly the advice of the doctors? They would have 
all been dead. What would the people have been, if 
at any age of the world they had followed implicitly the 
direction of the church? They would have all been 
idiots. It is a splendid thing that there is always some 
grand man who will not mind, and who will think for 
himself. 

I believe in allowing the children to think for them- 
selves. I believe in the democracy of the family. If 
in this world there is anything splendid, it is a home 
where all are equals. 

You will remember that only a few years ago par- 



THB LIBERTY OF CHILDREN 155 

ents would tell their children to "let their victuals 
stop their mouths." They used to eat as though it 
were a religious ceremony — a very solemn thing. Life 
should not be treated as a solemn matter. I like to 
see the children at table, and hear each one telling 
of the wonderful things he has seen and heard. I 
like to hear the clatter of knives and forks and spoons 
mingling with their happy voices. I had rather hear 
it than any opera that was ever put upon the boards. 
Let the children have liberty. Be honest and fair with 
them ; be just ; 'be tender, and they will make you rich 
in love and joy. 

Men are oaks, women are vines, children are 
flowers. 

31. The human race has been guilty of almost count- 
less crimes; but I have some excuse for man- 
kind. This world, after all, is not very well adapted 
to raising good people. In the first place, nearly all 
of it is water. It is much better adapted to fish cul- 
ture than to the production of folks. Of that por- 
tion which is land not one-eighth has suitable soil and 
climate to produce great men and women. You can- 
not raise men and women of genius, without the 
proper soil and climate, any more than you can raise 
corn and wheat upon the ice fields of the Arctic sea. 
You must have the necessary conditions and sur- 
roundings. Man is a product ; you must have the soil 
and food. The obstacles presented by nature must 
not be so great that man cannot, by reasonable indus- 
try and courage, overcome them. There is upon this 
world only a narrow belt of land, circling zigzag the 
globe, upon which you can produce men and women 



i 5 6 THB DELIVERY OP A SPEECH 

of talent. In the Southern Hemisphere the real cli- 
mate that man needs falls mostly upon the sea, and 
the result is, that the southern half of our world has 
never produced a man or woman of great genius. In 
the far north there is no genius — it is too cold. In 
the far south there is no genius — it is too warm. 
There must be winter, and there must be summer. In 
a country where man needs no coverlet but a cloud, 
revolution is his normal condition. Winter is the 
mother of industry and prudence. Above all, it is the 
mother of the family relation. Winter holds in its icy 
arms the husband and wife and the sweet children. If 
upon this earth we ever have a glimpse of heaven, it 
is when we pass a home in winter, at night, and 
through the windows, the curtains drawn aside, we 
see the family about the pleasant hearth; the old lady 
knitting; the cat playing with the yarn; the children 
wishing they had as many dolls or dollars or knives 
or somethings, as there are sparks going out to join 
the roaring blast; the father reading and smoking, 
and the clouds rising like incense from the altar of 
domestic joy. I never passed such a house without 
feeling that I had received a benediction. 

Civilization, liberty, justice, charity, intellectual ad- 
vancement, are all flowers that blossom in the drifted 
snow. 

32. I do not know that I can better illustrate the 
great truth that only part of the world is adapted to 
the production of great men and women than by call- 
ing your attention to the difference between vegeta- 
tion in valleys and upon mountains. In the valley you 
find the oak and elm tossing their branches defiantly 



THE LIBERTY OF CHILDREN 157 

to the storm, and as you advance up the mountain 
side the hemlock, the pine, the birch, the spruce, the 
fir, and finally you come to little dwarfed trees, that 
look like other trees seen through a telescope re- 
versed — every limb twisted as though in pain — get- 
ting a scanty subsistence from the miserly crevices of 
the rocks. You go on and on, until at last the highest 
crag is freckled with a kind of moss, and vegetation 
ends. You might as well try to raise oaks and elms 
where the mosses grow, as to raise great men and great 
women where their surroundings are unfavorable. 
You must have the proper climate and soil. 

A few years ago we were talking about the annexa- 
tion of Santo Domingo to this country. I was in 
Washington at the time. I was opposed to it. I was 
told that it was a most delicious climate ; that the soil 
produced everything. But I said : "We do not want 
it; it is not the right kind of country in which to raise 
American citizens. Such a climate would debauch us. 
You might go there with five thousand Congregational 
preachers, five thousand ruling elders, five thousand 
professors in colleges, five thousand of the solid men 
of Boston and their wives ; settle them all in San Dom- 
ingo, and you will see the second generation riding 
upon a mule, bareback, no shoes, a grapevine bridle, 
hair sticking out at the top of their sombreros, with a 
rooster under each arm, going to a cock fight on Sun- 
day." Such is the influence of climate. 

Science, however, is gradually widening the area 
within which men of genius can be produced. We 
are conquering the north with houses, clothing, food 
and fuel. We are in many ways overcoming the heat 



158 THE DELIVERY OP A SPEECH 

of the south. If we attend to this world instead of 
another, we may in time cover the land with men and 
women of genius. 

I have still another excuse. I believe that man 
came up from the lower animals. I do not say this as 
a fact. I simply say I believe it to be a fact. Upon 
that question I stand about eight to seven, which, for 
all practical purposes, is very near a certainty. When 
I first heard of that doctrine I did not like it. My 
heart was filled with sympathy for those people who 
have nothing to be proud of except ancestors. I 
thought, how terrible this will be upon the nobility of 
the Old World. Think of their being forced to trace 
their ancestry back to' the duke Orang Outang, or to 
the princess Chimpanzee. After thinking it all over, I 
came to the conclusion that I liked that doctrine. 1 
became convinced in spite of myself. I read about rud- 
imentary bones and muscles. I was told that every- 
body had rudimentary muscles extending from the ear 
into the cheek. I asked "What are they?" I was 
told: "They are the remains of muscles; that they 
became rudimentary from lack of use; they went into 
bankruptcy. They are the muscles with which your 
ancestors used to flap their ears." I do not know now 
so much wonder that we once had them as that we 
have outgrown them. 

33. After all I had rather belong to a race that 
started from the skull-less vertebrates in the dim 
Laurentian seas, vertebrates wiggling without know- 
ing why they wiggled, swimming without knowing 
where they were going, but that in some way began 
to develop, and began to get a little higher and a little 



THE LIBERTY OF CHILDREN 159 

higher in the scale of existence; that came up by de- 
grees through millions of ages through all the animal 
world, through all that crawls and swims and floats 
and climbs and walks, and finally produced the gen- 
tleman in the dug-out; and then from this man, get- 
ting a little grander, and each one below calling every 
one above him a heretic, calling every one who had 
made a little advance an infidel or an atheist — for in 
the history of this world the man who is ahead has 
always been called a heretic — I would rather come 
from a race that started from that skull-less verte- 
brate, and came up and up and up and finally pro- 
duced Shakespeare, the man who found the human 
intellect dwelling in a hut, touched it with the wand 
of his genius and it became a palace domed and pin- 
nacled; Shakespeare, who harvested all the fields of 
dramatic thought, and from whose day to this, there 
have been only gleaners of straw and chafT — I would 
rather belong to that race that commenced a skull- 
less vertebrate and produced Shakespeare, a race that 
has before it an infinite future, with the angel of prog- 
ress leaning from the far horizon, beckoning men for- 
ward, upward and onward forever — I had rather 
belong to' such a race, commencing there, producing 
this, and with that hope, than to have sprung from a 
perfect pair upon which the Lord has lost money 
every moment from that day to this. 

CONCLUSION 

I have given you my honest thought. Surely in- 
vestigation is better than unthinking faith. Surely 
reason is a better guide than fear. This world should 



i6o THB DBUVHRY OF A SPBBCH 

be controlled by the living, not by the dead. The 
grave is not a throne, and a corpse is not a king. Man 
should not try to live on ashes. 

The theologians dead, knew no more than the the- 
ologians now living. More than this cannot be said. 
About this world little is known, — about another 
world, nothing. 

Our fathers were intellectual serfs, and their fa- 
thers were slaves. The makers of our creeds were 
ignorant and brutal. Every dogma that we have, has 
upon it the mark of whip, the rust of chain, and the 
ashes of fagot. 

Our fathers reasoned with instruments of torture. 
They believed in the logic of fire and sword. They 
hated reason, they despised thought, they abhorred 
liberty. 

Superstition is the child of slavery. Free thought 
will give us truth. When all have the right to think 
and to express their thoughts, every brain will give 
to all the best it has. The world will then be filled with 
intellectual wealth. 

34. As long as men and women are afraid of the 
church, as long as a minister inspires fear, as long as 
people reverence a thing simply because they do not 
understand it, as long as it is respectable to lose your 
self-respect, as long as the church has power, as long 
as mankind worship a book, just so long will the world 
be filled with intellectual paupers and vagrants, cov- 
ered with the soiled and faded rags of superstition. 

As long as woman regards the Bible as the charter 
of her rights, she will be the slave of man. The Bible 
was not written by a woman. Within its lids there 



THE LIBERTY OF CHILDREN 161 

is nothing but humiliation and shame for her. She is 
regarded as the property of man. She is made to ask 
forgiveness for becoming a mother. She is as much 
below her husband, as her husband is below Christ. 
She is not allowed to speak. The gospel is too pure 
to be spoken by her polluted lips. Woman should 
learn in silence. 

In the Bible will be found no description of a civil- 
ized home. The free mother surrounded by free and 
loving children, adored by a free man, her husband, 
-was unknown to the inspired writers of the Bible. 
They did not believe in the democracy of home — in 
the republicanism of the fireside. 

These inspired gentlemen knew nothing of the 
rights of children. They were the advocates of brute 
force — the disciples of the lash. They knew nothing 
of human rights. Their doctrines have brutalized the 
homes of millions, and filled the eyes of infancy with 
tears. 

Let us free ourselves from the tyranny of a book, 
from the slavery of dead ignorance, from the aris- 
tocracy of the air. 

There has never been upon the earth a generation of 
free men and women. It is not yet time to write a 
creed. Wait until the chains are broken — until dun- 
geons are not regarded as temples. Wait until so- 
lemnity is not mistaken for wisdom — until mental 
cowardice ceases to be known as reverence. Wait un- 
til the living are considered the equals of the dead — 
until the cradle takes precedence of the coffin. Wait 
until what we know can be spoken without regard to 
what others may believe. Wait until teachers take 



1 62 THB DBLIVBRY OF A SPBBCH 

the place of preachers — until followers become in- 
vestigators. Wait until the world is free before you 
write a creed. 

In this creed there will be but one word — Liberty. 

Oh Liberty, float not forever in the far horizon — 
remain not forever in the aream of the enthusiast, the 
philanthropist and poet, but come and make thy home 
among the children of men ! 

I know not what discoveries, what inventions, what 
thoughts may leap from the brain of the world. I 
know not what garments of glory may be woven by 
the years to come. I cannot dream of the victories 
to be won upon the fields of thought ; but I do know, 
that coming from the infinite sea of the future, there 
will never touch this "bank and shoal of time" a 
richer gift, a rarer blessing than liberty for man, for 
woman, and for child. 

A TRIBUTE TO EBON C. INGERSOLL 
By His Brother Robert 

THE RECORD OF A GENEROUS LjEE RUNS LIKE A VINE 
AROUND THE MEMORY OE OUR DEAD, AND EVERY 
SWEET, UNSELEISH ACT IS NOW A PEREUMED 
FXOWER. 

35. Dear Friends: I am going to do that which 
the dead oft promised he would do for me. 

The loved and loving brother, husband, father, 
friend, died where manhood's morning almost touches 
noon, and while the shadows still were falling toward 
the west. 



TRIBUTE TO E. C. INGERSOLL 163 

He had not passed on life's highway the stone that 
marks the highest point; but, being weary for a mo- 
ment, he lay down by the wayside, and, using his bur- 
den for a pillow, fell into that dreamless sleep that 
kisses down his eyelids still. While yet in love with 
life and raptured with the world, he passed to silence 
and pathetic dust. 

Yet, after all, it may be best, just in the happiest, 
sunniest hour of all the voyage, while eager winds are 
kissing even" sail, to dash against the unseen rock, 
and in an instant hear the billows roar above a sunken 
ship. For whether in mid sea or 'mong the breakers 
of the farther shore, a wreck at last must mark the 
end of each and all. And every life, no matter if its 
every hour is rich with love and every moment jew- 
eled with a joy, will, at its close, become a tragedy as 
sad and deep and dark as can be woven of the warp 
and woof of mystery and death. 

This brave and tender man in every storm of life 
was oak and rock ; but in the sunshine he was vine and 
flower. He was the friend of all heroic souls. He 
climbed the heights, and left all superstitions far be- 
low, while on his forehead fell the golden dawning of 
the grander day. 

36. He loved the beautiful, and was with color, form, 
and music touched to tears. He sided with the weak, 
the poor, and wronged, and lovingly gave alms. With 
loyal heart and with the purest hands he faithfully 
discharged all public trusts. 

He was a worshipper of liberty, a friend of the op- 
pressed. A thousand times I have heard him quote 
these words : ''For Justice all place a temple, and all 



164 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

season, summer/' He believed that happiness was the 
only good, reason the only torch, justice the only wor- 
ship, humanity the only religion, and love the only 
priest. He added to the sum of human joy; and 
were every one to whom he did some loving service to 
bring a blossom to his grave, he would sleep tonight 
beneath a wilderness of flowers. 

Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren 
peaks of two eternities. We strive in vain to look be- 
yond the heights. We cry aloud, and the only answer 
is the echo of our wailing cry. From the voiceless 
lips of the unreplying dead there comes no word ; but 
in the night of death hope sees a star and listening 
love can hear the rustle of a wing. 

He who sleeps here, when dying, mistaking the ap- 
proach of death for the return of health, whispered 
with his latest breath, "I am better now." Let us be- 
lieve, in spite of doubts and dogmas, of fears and 
tears, that these dear words are true of all the count- 
less dead. 

And now, to you, who have been chosen, from 
among the many men he loved, to do the last sad of- 
fice for the dead, we give his sacred dust. 

Speech cannot contain our love. There was, there 
is, no gentler, stronger, manlier man. 



THE PRINCE OE PEACE 
By Wiujam Jennings Bryan 

William Jennings Bryan was born in Salem, Illinois, March 
19, i860. He was graduated from Illinois College in 1881, 
valedictorian of his class, and received the degree of A.M. in 
1884. The Union College of Law, Chicago, granted him the 
degree of LL.B. in 1883. The Universities of Nebraska and 
Arizona have conferred upon him the honorary degree of 
LL.D. He practiced law at Jacksonville, Illinois, from 1883 
to 1887, when he removed to Lincoln, Nebraska. He was a 
member of Congress from 1891 to 1895. He was a delegate 
to the National Democratic Convention in 1896, where he 
wrote the "silver plank" in the platform and made the famous 
"Cross of Gold" speech which won for him the nomination 
to the presidency of the United States. He travelled over 
18,000 miles during that campaign, making speeches at almost 
every stopping place. He was defeated by William McKinley, 
and again in 1900. He then established his magazine, "The 
Commoner," and still publishes it. He was nominated for 
the third time in 1908, but was again defeated. He became 
Secretary of State under President Woodrow Wilson in 1913, 
resigning in 1915. During this period he made treaties with 
governments which include more than three-fourths of the 
world's population, the treaties providing for investigation of 
international disputes before resorting to war. 

In addition to his political activities he has spoken very 
widely on religious questions. "The Prince of Peace" is per- 
haps the best known of his religious lectures. It is here 
reprinted with the kind permission of Mr. Bryan. 

Mr. Bryan is commonly known as one of the very best, 
if not the best, public speaker of our time. He has from the 
first been an advocate of issues that were unpopular, usually 
because of the fact that they were new. He has lived to see 



166 THB DBLIVBRY OF A SPBBCH 

most of his policies adopted in this country, among them 
popular election of United States senators, equal suffrage 
and prohibition of liquor. His style is conversational and 
direct, vigorous, clear, and emotionally strong. A keen sense 
of humor and a delightful personality make him a universal 
favorite with audiences. 

I. I offer no apology for writing upon a religious 
theme, for it is the most universal of all themes. I am 
interested in the science of government, but I am more 
interested in religion than in government. I enjoy 
making a political speech — I have made a good many 
and shall make more — but I would rather speak on 
religion than on politics. I commenced speaking on 
the stump when I was only twenty, but I commenced 
speaking in the church six years earlier — and I shall 
be in the church even after I am out of politics. I 
feel sure of my ground when I make a political 
speech, but I feel even more certain of my ground 
when I make a religious speech. If I addressed you 
upon the subject of law I might interest the lawyers; 
if I discussed the science of medicine I might interest 
the physicians; in like manner merchants might be 
interested in comments on commerce, and farmers in 
matters pertaining to agriculture ; but no one of these 
subjects appeals to all. 

Even the science of government, though broader 
than any profession or occupation, does not embrace 
the whole sum of life, and those who think upon it 
differ so among themselves that one could not enlarge 
upon the subject so as to please a part without dis- 
pleasing others. While to me the science of govern- 
ment is intensely absorbing, I recognize that the most 



THE PRINCB OF PBACB 167 

important things in life lie outside of the realm of 
government and that more depends upon what the in- 
dividual does for himself than upon what the govern- 
ment does or can do for him. Men can be miserable 
under the best government and they can be happy 
under the worst government. 

Government affects but a part of the life which we 
live here and does not deal at all with the life beyond, 
while religion touches the infinite circle of existence 
as well as the small arc of that circle which we spend 
on earth. No greater theme, therefore, can engage 
our attention. If I discuss questions of government 
I must secure the cooperation of a majority before I 
can put my ideas into practice but if, in referring to 
religion, I can touch one human heart for good, I 
have not laboured in vain no matter how large the ma- 
jority may be against me. 

2. Man is a religious being; the heart instinctively 
seeks for a God. Whether he worships on the banks 
of the Ganges, prays with his face upturned to the 
sun, kneels towards Mecca or, regarding all space as 
a temple, communes with the Heavenly Father ac- 
cording to the Christian creed, man is essentially de- 
vout. 

There are honest doubters whose sincerity we rec- 
ognize and respect, but occasionally I find young men 
who think it smart to be skeptical; they talk as if it 
were an evidence of larger intelligence to scoff at 
creeds and to refuse to connect themselves with 
churches. They call themselves "Liberal", as if a 
Christian were narrow minded. Some go so far as 
to assert that the "advanced thought of the world" 



j68 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

has discarded the idea that there is a God. To these 
young men I desire to address myself. 

Even some older people profess to regard religion as 
a superstition, pardonable in the ignorant but un- 
worthy of the educated. Those who hold this view 
look down with mild contempt upon such as give to 
religion a definite place in their thoughts and lives. 
They assume an intellectual superiority and often take 
little pains to conceal the assumption. Tolstoy ad- 
ministers to the "cultured crowd" (the words quoted 
are his) a severe rebuke when he declares that the re- 
ligious sentiment rests not upon a superstitious fear 
of the invisible forces of nature, but upon man's con- 
sciousness of his finiteness amid an infinite universe 
and of his sinfulness ; and this consciousness, the great 
philosopher adds, man can never outgrow. Tolstoy 
is right ; man recognizes how limited are his own 
powers and how vast is the universe, and he leans 
upon the arm that is stronger than his. Man feels the 
weight of his sins and looks for One who is sinless. 

Religion has been defined by Tolstoy as the relation 
which man fixes between himself and his God, and 
morality as the outward manifestation of this inward 
relation. Every one, by the time he reaches maturity, 
has fixed some relation between himself and God and 
no material change in this relation can take place with- 
out a revolution in the man, for this relation is the 
most potent influence that acts upon a human life. 

3. Religion is the foundation of morality in the in- 
dividual and in the group of individuals. Material- 
ists have attempted to build up a system of morality 
upon the basis of enlightened self-interest. They 



THE PRINCE OF PEACE i6g 

would have man figure out by mathematics that it pays 
him to abstain from wrong-doing; they would even 
inject an element of selfishness into altruism, but the 
moral system elaborated by the materialists has sev- 
eral defects. 

First, its virtues are borrowed from moral systems 
based upon religion. All those who are intelligent 
enough to discuss a system of morality are so satur- 
ated with the morals derived from systems resting 
upon religion that they cannot frame a system rest- 
ing upon reason alone. Second, as it rests upon argu- 
ment rather than upon authority, the young are not 
in a position to accept or reject. Our laws do not 
permit a young man to dispose of real estate until he 
is twenty-one. Why this restraint? Because his rea- 
son is not mature ; and yet a man's life is largely 
moulded by the environment of his youth. Third, one 
never knows just how much of his decision is due to 
reason and how much is due to passion or to selfish 
interest. Passion can dethrone the reason — we rec- 
ognize this in our criminal laws. We also recognize 
the bias of self-interest when we exclude from the 
jury every man, no matter how reasonable or upright 
he may be, who has a pecuniary interest in the result 
of the trial. And, fourth, one whose morality rests 
upon a nice calculation of benefits to be secured 
spends time figuring that he should spend in action. 
Those who keep a book account of their good deeds 
seldom do enough good to justify keeping books. A 
noble life cannot be built upon an arithmetic ; it must 
be rather like the spring that pours forth constantly 
of that which refreshes and invigorates. 



1 7 o THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

Morality is the power of endurance in man ; and a 
religion which teaches personal responsibility to God 
gives strength to morality. There is a powerful re- 
straining influence in the belief that an all-seeing eye 
scrutinizes every thought and word and act of the in- 
dividual. 

4. There is a wide difference between the man who 
is trying to conform his life to a standard of morality 
about him and the man who seeks to make his life ap- 
proximate to a divine standard. The former attempts 
to live up to the standard, if it is above him, and down 
to it, if it below him — and if he is doing right only 
when others are looking he is sure to find a time when 
he thinks he is unobserved, and then he takes a vaca- 
tion and falls. One needs the inner strength which 
comes with the conscious presence of a personal God. 
If those who are thus fortified sometimes yield to 
temptation, how helpless and hopeless must those be 
who rely upon their own strength alone ! 

There are difficulties to be encountered in religion, 
but there are difficulties to be encountered every- 
where. If Christians sometimes have doubts and 
and fears, unbelievers have more doubts and greater 
fears. I passed through a period of skepticism when 
I was in college, and I have been glad ever since that 
I became a member of the church before I left home 
for college, for it helped me during those trying days. 
And the college days cover the dangerous period in 
the young man's life; he is just coming into posses- 
sion of his powers, and feels stronger than he ever 
feels afterwards — and he thinks he knows more than 
he ever does know. 



THE PRINCE OF PEACE 171 

It was at this period that I became confused by the 
different theories of creation. But I examined these 
theories and found that they all assumed something 
to begin with. You can test this for yourselves. The 
nebular hypothesis, for instance, assumes that matter 
and force existed — matter in particles infinitely fine 
and each particle separated from every other particle 
by space infinitely great. Beginning with this assump- 
tion, force working on matter — according to this 
hypothesis — created a universe. 

5. Well, I have a right to assume, and I prefer to 
assume, a Designer back of the design — a Creator 
back of the creation; and no matter how long you 
draw out the process of creation, so long as God stands 
back of it you cannot shake my faith in Jehovah. In 
Genesis it is written that, in the beginning, God cre- 
ated the heavens and the earth, and I can stand on 
that proposition until I find some theory of creation 
that goes farther back than "the beginning". We 
must begin with something — we must start some- 
where — and the Christian begins with God. 

I do not carry the doctrine of evolution as far as 
some do ; I am not yet convinced that man is a lineal 
descendant of the lower animals. I do not mean to 
find fault with you if you want to accept the theory; 
all I mean to say is that while you may trace your 
ancestry back to the monkey if you find pleasure or 
pride in doing so, you shall not connect me with your 
family tree without more evidence than has yet been 
produced. I object to the theory for several reasons. 

First, it is a dangerous theory. If a man links him- 
self in generations with the monkey, it then becomes 



i 7 2 THE DELIVERY OE A SPEECH 

an important question whether he is going towards 
him or coming from him — and I have seen them 
going in both directions. I do not know of any ar- 
gument that can be used to prove that man is an im- 
proved monkey that may not be used just as well to 
prove that the monkey is a degenerate man, and the 
latter theory is more plausible than the former. 

It is true that man in some physical characteristics 
resembles the beast, but man has a mind as well as a 
body, and a soul as well as a mind. The mind is 
greater than the body and the soul is greater than the 
mind, and I object to having man's pedigree traced on 
one-third of him only — and that the lowest third. 
Fairbairn, in his "Philosophy of Christianity", lays 
down a sound proposition when he says that it is not 
sufficient to explain man as an animal ; that it is neces- 
sary to explain man in history — and the Darwinian 
theory does not do this. The ape, according to this 
theory, is older than man and yet the ape is still an 
ape while man is the author of the marvellous civil- 
ization which we see about us. 

6. One does not escape from mystery, however, by 
accepting this theory, for it does not explain the ori- 
gin of life. When the follower of Darwin has traced 
the germ of life back to the lowest form in which it 
appears — and to follow him one must exercise more 
faith than religion calls for — he finds that scientists 
differ. Those who reject the idea of creation are di- 
vided into two schools, some believing that the first 
germ of life came from another planet and others 
holding that it was the result of spontaneous genera- 
tion. Each school answers the arguments advanced 






THE PRINCE OF PEACE 173 

by the other, and as they cannot agree with each 
other, I am not compelled to agree with either. 

If I were compelled to accept one of these theories 
I would prefer the first, for if we can chase the germ 
of life off this planet and get it out into space we can 
guess the rest of the way and no one can contradict 
us; if we accept the doctrine of spontaneous genera- 
tion we cannot explain why spontaneous generation 
ceased to act after the first germ was created. 

Go back as far as we may, we cannot escape from 
the creative act, and it is just as easy for me to be- 
lieve that God created man as he is as to believe that, 
millions of years ago, He created a germ of life and 
endowed it with power to develop into all that we see 
today. I object to the Darwinian theory, until more 
conclusive proof is produced, because I fear we shall 
lose the consciousness of God's presence in our daily 
life, if we must accept the theory that through all the 
ages no spiritual force has touched the life of man or 
shaped the destiny of nations. 

But there is another objection. The Darwinian the- 
ory represents man as reaching his present perfection 
by the operation of the law of hate — the merciless 
law by which the strong crowd out and kill off the 
weak. If this is the law of our development then, if 
there is any logic that can bind the human mind, we 
shall turn backward towards the beast in proportion 
as we substitute the law of love. I prefer to believe 
that love rather than hatred is the law of develop- 
ment. How can hatred be the law of development 
when nations have advanced in proportion as thej 



i 7 4 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

have departed from that law and adopted the law of 
love? 

7. But, I repeat, while I do not accept the Darwin- 
ian theory I shall not quarrel with you about it: I 
only refer to it to remind you that it does not solve 
the mystery of life or explain human progress. I fear 
that some have accepted it in the hope of escaping 
from the miracle, but why should the miracle frighten 
us? And yet I am inclined to think that it is one of 
the test questions with the Christian. 

Christ cannot be separated from the miraculous ; 
His birth, His ministrations, and His resurrection, all 
involve the miraculous, and the change which His re- 
ligion works in the human heart is a continuing mira- 
cle. Eliminate the miracles and Christ becomes merely 
a human being and His Gospel is stripped of divine 
authority. 

The miracle raises two questions : "Can God per- 
form a miracle?" and "Would He want to?" The 
first is easy to answer. A God who can make a world 
can do anything He wants to do with it. The power 
to perform miracles is necessarily implied in the power 
to create. But would God want to perform a mira- 
cle? — this is the question which has given most of 
the trouble. The more I have considered it the less 
inclined I am to answer in the negative. To say that 
God would not perform a miracle is to assume a more 
intimate knowledge of God's plans and purposes than 
I can claim to have. I will not deny that God does 
perform a miracle or may perform one merely be- 
cause I do not know how or why He does it. I find it 
so difficult to decide each day what God wants done 



THE PRINCE OF PEACE 175 

now that I am not presumptuous enough to attempt to 
declare what God might have wanted to do thousands 
of years ago. 

8. The fact that we are constantly learning of the 
existence of new forces suggests the possibility that 
God may operate through forces yet unknown to us, 
and the mysteries with which we deal every day warn 
me that faith is as necessary as sight. Who would 
have credited a century ago the stories that are now 
told of the wonder-working electricity? For ages man 
had known the lightning, but only to fear it ; now, this 
invisible current is generated by a man-made ma- 
chine, imprisoned in a man-made wire and made to do 
the bidding of man. We are even able to dispense 
with the wire and hurl words through space, and the 
X-ray has enabled us to look through substances which 
were supposed, until recently, to exclude all light. The 
miracle is not more mysterious than many of the 
things with which man now deals — it is simply dif- 
ferent. The miraculous birth of Christ is not more 
mysterious than any other conception — it is simply 
unlike it; nor is the resurrection of Christ more mys- 
terious than the myriad resurrections which mark 
each annual seed-time. 

It is sometimes said that God could not suspend one 
of His laws without stopping the universe, but do we 
not suspend or overcome the law of gravitation every 
day? Every time we move a foot or lift a weight we 
temporarily overcome one of the most universal of 
natural laws and yet the world is not disturbed. 

9. Science has taught us so many things that we 
are tempted to conclude that we know everything, but 



i 7 6 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

there is really a great unknown which is still unex- 
plored and that which we have learned ought to in- 
crease our reverence rather than our egotism. Science 
has disclosed some of the machinery of the universe, 
but science has not yet revealed to us the great se- 
cret — the secret of life. It is to be found in every 
blade of grass, in every insect, in every bird and in 
every animal, as well as in man. Six thousand years 
of recorded history and yet we know no more about 
the secret of life than they knew in the beginning! We 
live, we plan; we have our hopes, our fears; and yet 
in a moment a change may come over any one of us 
and this body will become a mass of lifeless clay. 
What is it that, having, we live, and having not, we 
are as the clod ? The progress of the race and the civ- 
ilization which we now behold are the work of men 
and women who have not yet solved the mystery of 
their own lives. 

And our food, must we understand it before we eat 
it? If we refused to eat anything until we could under- 
stand the mystery of its growth, we would die of star- 
vation. But mystery does not bother us in the dining- 
room; it is only in the church that it is a stumbling- 
block. 

io. I was eating a piece of watermelon some months 
ago and was struck with its beauty. I took some of 
the seeds and dried them and weighed them, and found 
that it would require some five thousand seeds to 
weigh a pound ; and then I applied mathematics to 
that forty-pound melon. One of these seeds, put into 
the ground, when warmed by the sun and moistened 
by the rain, takes off its coat and goes to work; it 



THE PRINCE OF PEACE 177 

gathers from somewhere two hundred thousand times 
its own weight, and forcing this raw material through 
a tiny stem, constructs a watermelon. It ornaments 
the outside with a covering of green ; inside the green 
it puts a layer of white, and within the white a core of 
red, and all through the red it scatters seeds, each one 
capable of continuing the work of reproduction. 
Where does that little seed get its tremendous power? 
Where does it find its colouring matter? How does it 
collect its flavouring extract? How does it build a 
watermelon? Until you can explain a watermelon, 
do not be too sure that you can set limits to the power 
of the Almighty and say just what He would do or 
how He would do it. I cannot explain the water- 
melon, but I eat it and enjoy it. 

The egg is the most universal of foods and its use 
dates from the beginning, but what is more mysterious 
than an egg? When an egg is fresh it is an important 
article of merchandise ; a hen can destroy its market 
value in a week's time, but in two weeks more she can 
bring forth from it what man could not find in it. We 
eat eggs, but we cannot explain an egg. 

Water has been used from the birth of man; we 
learned after it had been used for ages that it is 
merely a mixture of gases, but it is far more impor- 
tant that we have water to drink than that we know 
that it is not water. 

11. Everything that grows tells a like story of in- 
finite power. Why should I deny that a divine hand 
fed a multitude with a few loaves and fishes when 1! 
see hundreds of millions fed every year by a hand 
which converts the seeds scattered over the field into 



178 THE DBUVBRY OF A SPEECH 

an abundant harvest? We know that food can be 
multiplied in a few months' time; shall we deny the 
power of the Creator to eliminate the element of time, 
when we have gone so far in eliminating the element 
of space? Who am I that I should attempt to meas- 
ure the arm of the Almighty with my puny arm, or 
to measure the brain of the Infinite with my finite 
mind ? Who am I that I should attempt to put metes 
and bounds to the power of the Creator ? 

But there is something even more wonderful still — 
the mysterious change that takes place in the human 
heart when the man begins to hate the things he loved 
and to love the things he hated ; the marvellous trans- 
formation that takes place in the man who, before the 
change, would have sacrificed a world for his own 
advancement but who, after the change, would give 
his life for a principle and esteem it a privilege to 
make sacrifice for his convictions ! What greater mir- 
acle than this, that converts a selfish, self-centred hu- 
man being into a centre from which good influences 
flow out in every direction! And yet this miracle has 
been wrought in the heart of each one of us — or 
may be wrought — and we have seen it wrought in the 
hearts and lives of those about us. No, living a life 
that is a mystery, and living in the midst of mystery 
and miracles, I shall not allow either to deprive me 
of the benefits of the Christian religion. If you ask 
me if I understand everything in the Bible, I answer, 
no, but if we will try to live up to what we do under- 
stand, we will be kept so busy doing good that we will 
not have time to worry about the passages which we 
do not understand. 



THE PRINCE OP PEACE 179 

12. Some of those who question the miracle also 
question the theory of atonement; they assert that it 
does not accord with their idea of justice for one to 
die for all. Let each one bear his own sins and the 
punishments due for them, they say. The doctrine of 
vicarious suffering is not a new one ; it is as old as the 
race. That one should suffer for others is one of the 
most familiar of principles and we see the principle 
illustrated every day of our lives. Take the family, 
for instance; from the day the mother's first child is 
born, for twenty or thirty years her children are 
scarcely out of her waking thoughts. Her life trem- 
bles in the balance at each child's birth; she sacrifices 
for them, she surrenders herself to them. 

Is it because she expects them to pay her back? 
Fortunate for the parent and fortunate for the child 
if the latter has an opportunity to repay in part the 
debt it owes. But no child can compensate a parent 
for a parent's care. In the course of nature the debt 
is paid, not to the parent, but to the next generation, 
and the next — each generation suffering, sacrificing 
for and surrendering itself to the generation that fol- 
lows. This is the law of our lives. 

Nor is this confined to the family. Every step in 
civilization has been made possible by those who have 
been willing to sacrifice for posterity. Freedom of 
speech, freedom of the press, freedom of conscience 
and free government have all been won for the world 
by those who were willing to labour unselfishly for 
their fellows. So well established is this doctrine that 
we do not regard any one as great unless he recog- 



180 THE DBLIVBRY OF A SPEECH 

nizes how unimportant his life is in comparison with 
the problems with which he deals. 

I find proof that man was made in the image of his 
Creator in the fact that, throughout the centuries, man 
has been willing to die, if necessary, that blessings 
denied to him might be enjoyed by his children, his 
children's children and the world. 

13. The seeming paradox: "He that saveth his life 
shall lose it and he that loseth his life for My sake 
shall find it," has an application wider than that us- 
ually given to it; it is an epitome of history. Those 
who live only for themselves live little lives, but those 
who stand ready to give themselves for the advance- 
ment of things greater than themselves find a larger 
life than the one they would have surrendered. Wen- 
dell Phillips gave expression to the same idea when he 
said, "What imprudent men the benefactors of the 
race have been. How prudently most men sink into 
nameless graves, while now and then a few forget 
themselves into immortality." We win immortality, 
not by remembering ourselves, but by forgetting our- 
selves in devotion to things larger than ourselves. 

Instead of being an unnatural plan, the plan of sal- 
vation is in perfect harmony with human nature as we 
understand it. Sacrifice is the language of love, and 
Christ, in suffering for the world, adopted the only 
means of reaching the heart. This can be demon- 
strated not only by theory but by experience, for the 
story of His life, His teachings, His sufferings and 
His death has been translated into every language and 
everywhere it has touched the heart. 

But if I were going to present an argument in fa- 



THB PRINCE OF PBACB 181 

vour of the divinity of Christ, I would not begin with 
miracles or mystery or with the theory of atonement. 
I would begin as Carnegie Simpson does in his book 
entitled, "The Fact of Christ". Commencing with the 
undisputed fact that Christ lived, he points out that 
one cannot contemplate this fact without feeling that 
in some way it is related to those now living. He says 
that one can read of Alexander, of Csesar or of Na- 
poleon, and not feel that it is a matter of personal 
concern; but that when one reads that Christ lived, 
and how He lived and how He died, he feels that 
somehow there is a cord that stretches from that life 
to his. 

14. As he studies the character of Christ he be- 
comes conscious of certain virtues which stand out in 
bold relief — His purity. His forgiving spirit, and 
His unfathomable love. The author is correct. Christ 
presents an example of purity in thought and life, and 
man, conscious of his own imperfections and grieved 
over his shortcomings, finds inspiration in the fact that 
He was tempted in all points like as we are, and yet 
without sin. I am not sure but that each can find just 
here a way of determining for himself whether he pos- 
sesses the true spirit of a Christian. If the sinless- 
ness of Christ inspires within him an earnest desire 
to conform his life more nearly to the perfect exam- 
ple, he is indeed a follower; if, on the other hand, he 
resents the reproof which the purity of Christ offers, 
and refuses to mend his ways, he has yet to be born 
again. 

The most difficult of all the virtues to cultivate is 
the forgiving spirit. Revenge seems to be natural with 



1 82 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

man ; it is human to want to get even with an enemy. 
It has even been popular to boast of vindictiveness ; it 
was once inscribed on a man's monument that he had 
repaid both friends and enemies more than he had re- 
ceived. This was not the spirit of Christ. He taught 
forgiveness and in that incomparable prayer which He 
left as a model for our petitions, He made our will- 
ingness to forgive the measure by which we may 
claim forgiveness. He not only taught forgiveness 
but He exemplified His teachings in His life. When 
those who persecuted Him brought Him to the most 
disgraceful of all deaths, His spirit of forgiveness rose 
above His sufferings and He prayed, "Father, forgive 
them, for they know not what they do \" 

But love is the foundation of Christ's creed. The 
world had known love before ; parents had loved their 
children, and children their parents; husbands had 
loved their wives, and wives their husbands; and 
friend had loved friend; but Jesus gave a new defi- 
nition of love. His love was as wide as the sea; its 
limits were so far-flung that even an enemy could not 
travel beyond its bounds. Other teachers sought to 
regulate the lives of their followers by rule and form- 
ula, but Christ's plan was to purify the heart and then 
to leave love to direct the footsteps. 

15. What conclusion is to be drawn from the life, 
the teachings and the death of this historic figure? 
Reared in a carpenter shop; with no knowledge of 
literature save Bible literature; with no acquaintance 
with philosophers living or with the writings of sages 
dead, when only about thirty years old He gathered 
disciples about Him, promulgated a higher code of 



THE PRINCE OF PEACE 183 

morals than the world had ever known before and 
proclaimed Himself the Messiah. He taught and 
performed miracles for a few brief months and then 
was crucified; His disciples were scattered and many 
of them put to death; His claims were disputed, His 
resurrection denied and His followers persecuted ; and 
yet from this beginning His religion spread until hun- 
dreds of millions have taken His name with rever- 
ence upon their lips and millions have been willing to 
die rather than surrender the faith which He put into 
their hearts. 

How shall we account for Him? Here is the great- 
est fact of history ; here is One who has with increas- 
ing power, for nineteen hundred years, .moulded the 
hearts, the thoughts and the lives of men, and He ex- 
erts more influence today than ever before. ''What 
think ye of Christ?'' It is easier to believe Him divine 
than to explain in any other way what He said and did 
and was. And I have greater faith even than before, 
since I have visited the Orient and witnessed the suc- 
cessful contest which Christianity is waging against 
the religions and philosophies of the East. 

I was thinking a few years ago of the Christmas 
which was then approaching and of Him in whose 
honour the day is celebrated. I recalled the message, 
"Peace on earth, good will to men," and then my 
thoughts ran back to the prophecy uttered centuries 
before His birth, in which He was described as the 
Prince of Peace. To reinforce my memory I reread 
the prophecy and I found immediately following a 
verse which I had forgotten — a verse which declares 
that of the increase of His peace and government there 



184 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

shall be no end. And, Isaiah adds, that He shall judge 
His people with justice, and with judgment. I had 
been reading of the rise and fall of nations, and occa- 
sionally I had met a gloomy philosopher who preached 
the doctrine that nations, like individuals, must of ne- 
cessity have their birth, their infancy, their maturity 
and finally their decay and death. But here I read of 
a government that is to be perpetual — a government 
of increasing peace and blessedness — the government 
of the Prince of Peace — and it is to rest on justice. 

1 6. I have thought of this prophecy many times 
during the last few years, and I have selected this 
theme that I might present some of the reasons which 
lead me to believe that Christ has fully earned the 
right to be called the Prince of Peace — a title that 
will in the years to come be more and more applied to 
Him. If He can bring peace to each individual heart, 
and if His creed when applied will bring peace 
throughout the earth, who will deny His right to be 
called the Prince of Peace? 

All the world is in search of peace ; every heart that 
ever beat has sought for peace, and many have been 
the methods employed to secure it. Some have thought 
to purchase it with riches and have laboured to secure 
wealth, hoping to find peace when they were able to 
go where they pleased and buy what they liked. Of 
those who have endeavoured to purchase peace with 
money, the large majority have failed to secure the 
money.. But what has been the experience of those 
who have been eminently successful in finance? They 
all tell the same story, viz., that they spent the first 
half of their lives trying to get money from others 



THE PRINCE OP PEACE 185 

and the last half trying to keep others from getting 
their money, and that they found peace in neither 
half. 

Some have even reached the point where they find 
difficulty in getting people to accept their money; and 
I know of no better indication of the ethical awaken- 
ing in this country than the increasing tendency to 
scrutinize the methods of money-making. I am san- 
guine enough to believe that the time will yet come 
when respectability will no longer be sold to great 
criminals by helping them to spend their ill-gotten 
gains. A long step in advance will have been taken 
when religious, educational and charitable institutions 
refuse to condone conscienceless methods in business 
and leave the possessor of illegitimate accumulations 
to learn how lonely life is when one prefers money to 
morals. 

17. Some have sought peace in social distinction, 
but whether they have been within the charmed circle 
and fearful lest they might fall out, or outside, and 
hopeful that they might get in, they have not found 
peace. Some have thought, vain thought, to find 
peace in political prominence; but whether office 
comes by birth, as in monarchies, or by election, as in 
republics, it does not bring peace. An office is not 
considered a high one if all can occupy it. Only when 
few in a generation can hope to enjoy an honour do 
we call it a great honour. 

I am glad that our Heavenly Father did not make 
the peace of the human heart to depend upon our 
ability to buy it with money, secure it in society, or 
win it at the polls, for in either case but few could 



^6 THE DBUVBRY OF A SPEBCH 

have obtained it, but when He made peace the reward 
of a conscience void of offense towards God and man, 
He put it within the reach of all. The poor can se- 
cure it as easily as the rich, the social outcast as freely 
as the leader of society, and the humblest citizen 
equally with those who wield political power. 

To those who have grown gray in the Church, I 
need not speak of the peace to be found in faith in 
God and trust in an over-ruling Providence. Christ 
taught that our lives are precious in the sight of God, 
and poets have taken up the thought and woven it 
into immortal verse. No uninspired writer has ex- 
pressed it more beautifully than William Cullen Bry- 
ant in his Ode to a Waterfowl. After following the 
wanderings of the bird of passage as it seeks first its 
southern and then its northern home, he concludes : 

"Thou art gone; the abyss of heaven 

Hath swallowed up thy form, but on my heart 
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given, 
And shall not soon depart. 

"He who, from zone to zone, 

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain 
flight, 
In the long way that I must tread alone, 
Will lead my steps aright." 

Christ promoted peace by giving us assurance that 
a line of communication can be established between 
the Father above and the child below. And who will 
measure the consolations of the hour of prayer? 



THE PRINCB OP PBACB 187 

18. And immortality. Who will estimate the peace 
which a belief in a future life has brought to the sor- 
rowing hearts of the sons of men? You may talk to 
the young about death ending all, for life is full and 
hope is strong, but preach not this doctrine to the 
mother who stands by the death-bed of her babe or 
to one who is within the shadow of a great affliction. 

When I was a young man I wrote to Colonel In- 
gersoll and asked him for his views on God and im- 
mortality. His secretary answered that the great in- 
fidel was not at home, but enclosed a copy of a speech 
of Colonel Ingersoll's which covered my question. I 
scanned it with eagerness and found that he had ex- 
pressed himself about as follows : "I do not say that 
there is no God, I simply say I do not know. I do not 
say that there is no life beyond the grave, I simply 
say I do not know." And from that day to this I 
have asked myself the question and have been un- 
able to answer it to my own satisfaction, how could 
any one find pleasure in taking from a human heart a 
living faith and substituting therefor the cold and 
cheerless doctrine, "I do not know." 

Christ gave us proof of immortality and it was a 
welcome assurance, although it would hardly seem 
necessary that one should rise from the dead to con- 
vince us that the grave is not the end. To every cre- 
ated thing God has given a tongue that proclaims a 
future life. 

If the Father deigns to touch with divine power the 
cold and pulseless heart of the buried acorn and to 
make it burst forth from its prison walls, will He 
leave neglected in the earth the soul of man, made in 



1 88 THB DBLIVBRY OF A SPBBCH 

the image of his Creator ? If He stoops to give to the 
rosebush, whose withered blossoms float upon the au- 
tumn breeze, the sweet assurance of another spring- 
time, will He refuse the words of hope to the sons of 
men when the frosts of winter come? If matter, 
mute and inanimate, though changed by the forces of 
nature into a multitude of forms, can never die, will 
the imperial spirit of man suffer annihilation when it 
has paid a brief visit like a royal guest to this tene- 
ment of clay? Rather let us believe that He who in 
His apparent prodigality wastes not the rain-drops, the 
evening sighing zephrys, the blade of grass, and cre- 
ated nothing without a cause — has made provision for 
a future life in which man's universal longing for im- 
mortality will find its realization. I am as sure that 
we live again as I am sure that we live today. 

19. In Cairo I secured a few grains of wheat that 
had slumbered for more than thirty centuries in an 
Egyptian tomb. As I looked at them this thought 
came into my mind: If one of those grains had been 
planted on the banks of the Nile the year after it 
grew, and all its lineal descendants had been planted 
and replanted from that time until now, its progeny 
would today be sufficiently numerous to feed the 
teeming millions of the world. An unbroken chain of 
life connects the earliest grains of wheat with the 
grains that we sow and reap. There is in the grain of 
wheat an invisible something which has power to dis- 
card the body that we see, and from earth and air 
fashion a new body so much like the old one that we 
cannot tell the one from the other. If this invisible 
germ of life in the grain of wheat can thus pass un- 



THE PRINCE OF PEACE 189 

impaired through three thousand resurrections, I shall 
not doubt that my soul has power to clothe itself with 
a body suited to its new existence when this earthly 
frame has crumbled into dust. 

A belief in immortality not only consoles the indi- 
vidual, but it exerts a powerful influence in bringing 
peace between individuals. If one actually thinks that 
man dies as the brute dies, he will yield more easily 
to the temptation to do' injustice to his neighbor when 
the circumstances are such as to promise security 
from detection. But if one really expects to meet 
again, and live eternally with, those whom he knows 
today, he is restrained from evil deeds by the fear of 
endless remorse. We do not know what rewards are 
in store for us or what punishments may be reserved, 
but if there were no other it would be some punish- 
ment for one who deliberately and consciously wrongs 
another to have to live forever in the company of the 
person wronged and have his littleness and selfishness 
laid bare. I repeat, a belief in immortality must ex- 
ert a powerful influence in establishing justice between 
men and thus laying the foundation for peace. 

20. Again, Christ deserves to be called the Prince of 
Peace because He has given us a measure of greatness 
which promotes peace. When His disciples quar- 
relled among themselves as to which should be great- 
est in the kingdom of Heaven, He rebuked them and 
said: "Let him who would be chiefest among you be 
the servant of all." 

Service is the measure of greatness ; it always has 
been true ; it is true today ; and it always will be true, 
that he is greatest who does the most of good. And 



190 



THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 



how this old world will be transformed when this 
standard of greatness becomes the standard of every 
life ! Nearly all of our controversies and combats 
grow out of the fact that we are trying to get some- 
thing from each other — there will be peace when our 
aim is to do something for each other. Our enmities 
and animosities arise largely from our efforts to get 
as much as possible out of the world — there will be 
peace when our endeavor is to put as much as pos- 
sible into the world. The human measure of a human 
life is its income ; the divine measure of a life is its 
outgo, its overflow — its contribution to the welfare 
of all. 

Christ also led the way to peace by giving us a for- 
mula for the propagation of truth. Not all of those 
who have really desired to do good have employed the 
Christian method — not all Christians even. In the his- 
tory of the human race but two methods have been 
used. The first is the forcible method, and it has been 
employed most frequently. A man has an idea which 
he thinks is good; he tells his neighbours about it and 
they do not like it. This makes him angry; he thinks 
it would be so much better for them if they would 
like it, and, seizing a club, he attempts to make them 
like it. But one trouble about this rule is that it works 
both ways ; when a man starts out to compel his neigh- 
bours to think as he does, he generally finds them 
willing to accept the challenge and they spend so much 
time in trying to coerce each other that they have no 
time left to do each other good. 

21. The other is the Bible plan — "Be not overcome 
of evil but overcome evil with good." And there is no 



THE PRINCE OF PEACE 191 

other way of overcoming evil. I am not much of a 
farmer — I get more credit for my farming than I 
deserve, and my little farm receives more advertising 
than it is entitled to. But I am farmer enough to 
know that if I cut down weeds they will spring up 
again; and farmer enough to know that if I plant 
something there which has more vitality than the weeds 
I shall not only get rid of the constant cutting, but 
have the benefit of the crop besides. 

In order that there might be no mistake in His plan 
of propagating the truth, Christ went into detail and 
laid emphasis upon the value of example — "So- live 
that others seeing your good works may be constrained 
to glorify your Father which is in Heaven". There is 
no human influence so potent for good as that which 
goes out from an upright life. A sermon may be en- 
swered; the arguments presented in a speech may be 
disputed; but no one can answer a Christian life — 
it is the unanswerable argument in favour of our re- 
ligion. 

It may be a slow process — this conversion of the 
world by the silent influence of a noble example but 
it is the only sure one, and the doctrine applies to na- 
tions as well as to individuals. The Gospel of the 
Prince of Peace gives us the only hope that the world 
has — and it is an increasing hope — of the substitu- 
tion of reason for the arbitrament of force in the set- 
tlement of international disputes. And our nation 
ought not to wait for other nations — it ought to take 
the lead and prove its faith in the omnipotence of 
truth. 

But Christ has given us a platform so fundamental 



i 9 2 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

that it can be applied successfully to all controversies. 
We are interested in platforms ; we attend conventions, 
sometimes travelling long distances ; we have wordy 
wars over the phraseology of various planks, and then 
we wage earnest campaigns to secure the endorsement 
of these platforms at the polls. The platform given 
to the world by the Prince of Peace is more far-reach- 
ing and more comprehensive than any platform ever 
written by the convention of any party in any country. 

22. When He condensed into one commandment 
those of the ten which relate to man's duty towards 
his fellows and enjoined upon us the rule, "Thou shalt 
love thy neighbor as thyself," He presented a plan 
for the solution of all the problems that now vex so- 
ciety or may hereafter arise. Other remedies may 
palliate or postpone the day of settlement, but this is 
all-sufficient and the reconciliation which it effects is 
a permanent one. 

My faith in the future — and I have faith — and 
my optimism — for I am an optimist — my faith and 
my optimism rest upon the belief that Christ's teach- 
ings are being more studied today than ever before, 
and that with this larger study will come a larger ap- 
plication of those teachings to the every-day life of the 
world, and to the questions with which we deal. 

In former times when men read that Christ came 
"to bring life and immortality to light", they placed 
the emphasis upon immortality ; now they are studying 
Christ's relation to human life. People used to read 
the Bible to find out what it said of Heaven ; now they 
read it more to find what light it throws upon the path- 
way of today. In former years many thought to pre- 



THE PRINCE OF PEACE 193 

pare themselves for future bliss by a life of seclusion 
here; we are learning that to follow in the footsteps 
of the Master we must go about doing good. Christ 
declared that He came that we might have life and 
have it more abundantly. The world is learning that 
Christ came not to narrow life, but to enlarge it — 
not to rob it of its joy, but to fill it to overflowing with 
purpose, earnestness and happiness. 

23. But this Prince of Peace promises not only 
peace but strength. Some have thought His teachings 
fit only for the weak and the timid and unsuited to 
men of vigour, energy and ambition. Nothing could 
be farther from the truth. Only the man of faith can 
be courageous. Confident that he fights on the side of 
Jehovah, he doubts not the success of his cause. What 
matters it whether he shares in the shouts of triumph? 
If every word spoken in behalf of truth has its influ- 
ence and every deed done for the right weighs in the 
final account, it is immaterial to the Christian whether 
his eyes behold victory or whether he dies in the midst 
of the conflict. 

"Yea, though thou lie upon the dust, 

When they who helped thee flea in fear, 
Die full of hope and manly trust, 
Like those who fell in battle here. 

"Another hand thy sword shall wield, 

Another hand the standard wave, 
Till from the trumpet's mouth is pealed 

The blast of triumph o'er thy grave." 



194 



THE DELIVERY OP A SPEECH 



Only those who believe attempt the seemingly im- 
possible, and, by attempting, prove that one, with God, 
can chase a thousand and that two can put ten 
thousand to flight. I can imagine that the early Chris- 
tians, who were carried into the Coliseum to make a 
spectacle for those more savage than the beasts, were 
entreated by their doubting companions not to en- 
danger their lives. But, kneeling in the centre of the 
arena, they prayed and sang until they were devoured. 
How helpless they seemed, and, measured by every 
human rule, how hopeless was their cause! And yet 
within a few decades the power which they invoked 
proved mightier than the legions of the emperor and 
the faith in which they died was triumphant o'er all 
the land. It is said that those who went to mock at 
their sufferings returned asking themselves, "What is 
it that can enter into the heart of man and make him 
die as these die?" They were greater conquerors in 
their death than they could have been had they pur- 
chased life by a surrender of their faith. 

24. What would have been the fate of the Church 
if the early Christians had had as little faith as many 
of our Christians today? And if the Christians of to- 
day had the faith of the martyrs, how long would it 
be before the fulfillment of the prophecy that "Every 
knee shall bow and every tongue confess" ? 

I am glad that He, who is called the Prince of 
Peace — who can bring peace to every troubled heart 
and whose teachings, exemplified in life, will bring 
peace between man and man, between community and 
community, between state and state, between nation 
and nation throughout the world — I am glad that He 



THE PRINCE OF PEACE 195 

brings courage as well as peace so that those who fol- 
low Him may take up and each day bravely do the 
duties that to that day fall. 

As the Christian grows older he appreciates more 
and more the completeness with which Christ satisfies 
the longings of the heart, and grateful for the peace 
which he enjoys and for the strength which he has re- 
ceived, he repeats the words of the great scholar, Sir 
William Jones : 

"Before thy mystic altar, heavenly truth, 
I kneel in manhood, as I knelt in youth, 
Thus let me kneel, till this dull form decay, 
And life's last shade be brightened by thy ray. ,s 



SOUR GRAPES 
By Edward A. Ott 

Edward Amherst Ott was born at Youngstown, Ohio, 
November 2.7, 1867. He studied at Hiram College and at 
Drake University, receiving his degree from the latter insti- 
tution. He was professor of English and Oratory at Drake 
University from 1891 to 1901. He was three times elected 
to the presidency of the International Lyceum -Association. 
His greatest work has been done in the popular lecture field, 
where for many years he has had an enviable reputation. 
He is the author of several books, among them at least two 
on the technique of public speaking. 

He is best known among public audiences for his lecture, 
"Sour Grapes," which is herewith printed. The lecture is a 
popularized account of the subject of heredity, written in 
1897. Conversationally direct, forceful and animated in style, 
Mr. Ott has left a vivid impression on the thousands of people 
who have been fortunate enough to hear him and to come 
under the influence of his personality. 

The lecture is reprinted, with some cuttings made in the 
interest of brevity, by permission of Mr. Ott and of his pub- 
lishers, The Educational Extension Service, Byron, New York. 

I. In "Sour Grapes" we emphasize no new fad of 
the hour. The subject, even in its wording, is more 
than three thousand years old. A sarcastic humorist, 
in ridiculing the degeneracy of the Hebrew race at a 
certain period of their history, said : "The fathers 
have eaten 'Sour Grapes' and the children's teeth are 
set on edge." The earnest-minded prophet who quoted 
this criticism hoped for a time when it could be said 
no more. 



SOUR GRAPHS 197 

The critic intended to convey the idea which we now 
express with the word heredity, or with the slang ex- 
pression, "3. chip off the old block", or with the ex- 
pression, "like father, like son", or "like begets like". 
It will not matter which one of these phrases we use 
if we understand each other. 

We are to discuss the most interesting subject in 
life — the law of life itself. Why is one man tall and 
another man short; one man dark and another man 
light; one man kind, gentle, generous, a good friend, 
and another man sour, cruel, mean and crabbed; one 
a success and another a failure ? The first time in life 
that the author's own attention was called to the fact 
that a character has a physical foundation ; that it lasts 
from generation to generation, that you can't get one 
in a day or lose it in a night, — that lesson came from 
the lips of an old gray-haired man, who knew little 
of his dictionary, nothing of his grammar, but a great 
deal about nature and the laws of life. I asked him 
why a little crippled child was crawling up the streets 
of our city, instead of running, romping and playing 
as the other children were doing; one that was cursed 
physically from the beginning and that had no hope 
in life? He tried to explain the matter as best he 
could, and finally ended by saying : "Why, my boy, you 
seem to know nothing of life ; you have only theories 
of character. This boy is not crippled because some- 
thing has happened to him, or because someone hurt 
him. It is just a matter of hitteridittery." 

And this old philosopher, who could come no nearer 
to pronouncing the word heredity than to call it hit- 



I 9 8 THH DBL1VBRY OB A SPBBCH 

teridittery, seemed to understand the philosophy of 
life better than many of our moralists do today. 

We do our moralizing "up in the air". We have 
great agitations and reform movements ; we pass new 
criminal laws. The real inherent condition of the peo- 
ple remains untouched. We talk about life as it 
might be, could be and should be. This old gentle- 
man had noticed it as it is. He had noticed that when- 
ever a blade of grass drops a seed it plants its own 
successor — timothy, clover, blue grass. He had no- 
ticed that, when the great oak drops the acorn, the 
branches of the parent tree soon shadow the little oak ; 
and that, when the pyramid-shaped beechnut drops 
into the rich, black loam of the forest, it is the little 
beech tree that springs up. 

2. In all nature there is no law more fundamental or 
far-reaching in its consequences than this tendency of 
life to reproduce itself. It is the only law by which 
you could explain the character of the horses that 
career upon our race tracks, and beat out the music of 
the jockey's heart with their polished hoofs upon the 
earth. It is the only law by which you could explain 
the character of the cattle that bear away the premium 
ribbons at our county fairs. It is the only law by which 
you could explain national characteristics. The genius 
of the Mexican people is the result of the mingling of 
the proud blood that marched under the banners of 
Leon and Castillo, with the lower Aztec tribes. It is 
the only law by which you could explain the charac- 
ter of the leaders in the world of letters, arts, state- 
craft and war. "Like begets like." And when the 
objection is made that the theory cannot be proved, 



SOUR GRAPHS 199 

that no two people are alike, we concede the point, and 
acknowledge that there is in nature a law of variety as 
well as a law of heredity. 

The law of heredity gives the race its stability. If 
it were not for an inherent character in people any 
crazy reform movement might sweep a state or na- 
tion to its destruction. Now, even a French Revolu- 
tion cannot destroy a nation, for there is something in 
the blood, bone and fiber of the people that leads them 
to take up the problems of life just where they were 
before the storm came. We foolishly thought we could 
"make over" the negro with a civil war ; and when the 
storm was passed the negro, industrially, socially and 
educationally, was left untouched. The long climb of 
civilization is still ahead of him; and if he ever ar- 
rives, he will arrive as the white man did, after cen- 
turies of voluntary work, of prayers, and agony, and 
tears — - but you can't give him civilization any more 
than you can give a lazy boy an education. You can 
furnish free opportunity, and there helpfulness meets 
a stone wall. All great good things people must do 
for themselves. No great good can be given to peo- 
ple. We all have to live out the days of life with the 
character we inherit. This law of inheritance for the 
individual is modified by the law of variety for the 
race. 

We pause to mention one great blessing under this 
law of variety. We never have more than one man 
of a kind in the world; and we acknowledge that this 
is a great blessing, because up to date one of a kind 
has been enough. 

3. And now, to note how the law of variety and the 



200 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

law of heredity together bless the world. Some fifty 
years ago, the luscious strawberry which we now en- 
joy in our markets was not in existence. Nature did 
not produce it for us. God had not planted it. Na- 
ture had planted a little, sweet-flavored wild straw- 
berry upon the prairies of the West. In another part 
of the world she had planted a large, hollow, tasteless 
strawberry — very prolific, but not good to eat. So the 
scientist, the biological priest of the world, a man who 
thinks about things, — and it educates the brain very 
much faster to think about things than it does to play 
with words and fool with language — the scientist 
stooped and whispered into the ears of this little wild 
rascal, and he went roving ; and by a process of cross- 
fertilization, a wedding took place ; and as a result of 
the union of this sweet-flavored little wild strawberry 
and the large, hollow, prolific one we have today the 
large, luscious strawberry of the market — one for- 
eign marriage that was not a failure — the only one 
recorded up to date. 

In a certain garden field, it was the custom to grow 
a fine variety of squash. One particular summer, a 
pumpkin seed got into the bed. The sun wooed, and 
the pumpkin and the squash grew side by side. The 
leaves spread, the vines intertwined, the plants looked 
so nearly alike that it seemed cruel to part them. At 
times the scoundrel so much resembles the gentleman 
that we lose the courage to root him out. So they 
grew, side by side, these two, and in autumn the leaves 
began to dry as usual and the harvest was gathered. 
There were some magnificent squashes, the house- 
wife's pride; and there were some magnificent pump- 



SOUR GRAPHS 201 

kins, the Jersey's pride; and there were some things, 
neither squashes nor pumpkins — failures — results 
of an unfortunate marriage. 

We have, however, a nurseryman in one of our 
Western states, who is earning a small fortune through 
his knowledge of this "Sour Grapes" idea. After many 
years of horticultural skill, he produced in his nurs- 
eries a large luscious pear. The sun kissed it a gold 
upon one side ; it was a beautiful brown upon the 
other, but the tree upon which it grew could not en- 
dure our winters, and so he thought, — and thought 
is still the most profitable thing in this world. He went 
around the globe, and in the sandhills of Japan he 
found a little China pear tree that you can't kill. Cut 
off at the roots, it will spring up again. He brought 
it around the globe; a wedding took place, and as a 
result of that union we have today a large, luscious 
hybrid pear, growing upon a rugged little tree, that 
can endure our winters; and the man is making a 
fortune out of it. However, all pears (pairs) are not 
so fortunate. 

4. We have a right to say this in more than a face- 
tious way. For, in all the world's history of which we 
have a record, there have appeared among humankind 
only about four hundred geniuses. If a young man 
wants a biographical library of the world's celebrated 
great he can put all the books into one good book- 
case. On the other hand, here in America, where life 
should be at its best; here where we have few large 
cities to contaminate us with their diseases and vices ; 
here where we have lived much out-of-doors and are 
well-housed and clothed and fed, and have never suf- 



202 THB DBLIVBRY OF A SPBBCH 

fered a famine — here, too, where we should know 
how to live, for we are an educated and enlightened 
people, yet here among us, out of every one hundred 
children born in the United States today one is a fail- 
ure, a cripple, imbecile or hereditary criminal child. In 
the states where we have statistics, it is now recorded 
that out of every one thousand children born, one hun- 
dred and sixty-five die before they are one year of 
age ; and in the congested manufacturing cities about 
three hundred and sixty-five die before the age of 
two. We are the most enlightened people in the 
world; but we do not know how to live. 

We get sick — we know not why. We get well — 
and are as surprised as the doctor attending us. Each 
year there are epidemics sweeping over the land — 
pneumonia, la grippe, scarlet and typhoid fever, and a 
thousand other ailments — and most of them abso- 
lutely unnecessary, foolish and morally wrong. We 
have an example in typhoid fever. Science knows 
how to prevent it. There is a city in the northwest 
where they have not had a case in six years. "How 
did they free themselves ?" Easily. They elected on the 
board of health a scientist, a man who knows some- 
thing, — not a politician. Then they elected some gen- 
tlemen on the council — and that settled it. The man 
of science knew what to do ; the council had morality 
enough to do it. The disease was stamped out by 
perfect sanitation. 

We preach and moralize theoretically, but give the 
public at large too little information. There is an 
ethics of biology. In "Sour Grapes" we are trying to 
emphasize one more reason for being good. If we 



SOUR GRAPHS 203 

bred the right kind of people, the work of the school 
and the church would be easy. We have proceeded on 
the theory that you can make people over, and if we 
had emphasized sanitation, hygiene and the biological 
views of life as we have the abstract morals, we would 
now have a different human race. 

5. We do not as yet approach the question of edu- 
cation from a scientific standpoint. The laymen still 
expect the teachers to reconstruct the child. They fool- 
ishly ask: "Why, — now that we have well-equipped 
schools, the best textbooks, the latest methods of edu- 
cation — why do not the number of good scholars 
multiply faster among the pupils ?" The answer, based 
on fact and not on theory, is that the teachers have to 
do their work with the kind of pupils the parents send 
to school. The healthy, bright, normal child becomes 
educated under any system, and if we had placed as 
much empahsis on the child as we have on the meth- 
ods of education, results would not now be so disap- 
pointing. The same critic asks : "Why, — now that 
we have one hundred thousand well-trained preachers 
in the country — why do not the saints multiply faster 
in our churches?" We have the same biological an- 
swer: It is because the preacher has to do his work 
with the kind of people who join. The people who 
unite with the churches sometimes bring very little of 
character and stamina, of strength of blood and bone 
and marrow to build on ; and the minister has to carry 
forward his organization with the material at hand. 
It is fair, therefore, to say to the critic of the school 
and the church that these institutions are doing mar- 
velously well when you consider the material they 



204 TH $ DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

work with, and to call attention to the fact that there 
is only one institution that does not keep the pace of 
progress ; and that is the home that produces the en- 
feebled, erratic and abnormal child, the despair of 
teacher, preacher and lawmaker alike. 

A legitimate question has always been asked by the 
audiences that have listened to the plea of "Sour 
Grapes" in the years past: "Why do we produce so 
many failures?" We must give hundreds of reasons 
in one answer: We have ceased to be good animals. 
And you can never lift people morally and intellec- 
tually above the level of the physical perfection. Moral 
degeneracy is a physiological fact. The minister has 
treated it as a moral and ethical fact, and has applied 
a moral and ethical cure; but boards of health and 
national crusades for hygiene and sanitation are also 
basic remedies. A single proof that we are no longer 
good animals, is the fact that it takes as many drug 
stores now to feed our people drugs and medicines 
every twenty-four hours as it does dry goods stores 
to clothe our bodies. We are a nation of drug fiends. 
We have been physiologically careless. In a single 
year our people expended one hundred million dollars 
for patent medicines alone. 

Our forefathers used to take bitters, — and that was 
a very polite name for it, too. We take powders, pel- 
lets and pills; and even the gray-haired saints, who 
would not frequent the saloons for the sake of their 
moral reputations, buy their patent medicines by the 
box ; and they buy them for the stimulants that are in 
them; and the people that are not drug fiends take 
absent treatment. 



SOUR GRAPHS 205 

6. Let us turn from this view of degeneracy to 
study the record of success. I have examined with 
some degree of care the history of the world's four 
hundred eminently successful people. I find that al- 
most without exception they came from families that 
would naturally produce their kind. Going back to 
the time of Aristotle we note that his father was a 
scholar and philosopher before him — so wise as to 
be chosen the intellectual counselor of the King of 
Macedonia and the physician to the King's household ; 
and from his time down we select now at random the 
leaders in the various professions. Here is Mrs. Sid- 
dons, — the greatest actress the world ever knew, — 
her father and mother were upon the stage. She 
graced it as it has not been graced since. Her chil- 
dren were upon the stage, and her children's children. 
And even in our day the Siddons blood is recognized 
in theatrical circles. It is only some ten years since 
that one died in her hotel in the city of Paris with an 
international reputation. Joseph Jefferson says, in the 
first sentence of his beautiful autobiography: "I was 
literally born upon the stage, or, at least, when I 
opened the back door of my home and stepped out 
into the back yard I was upon the stage of the old 
Washington theater, next to which my mother and 
father lived." Booth's whole life current flowed 
through a theatrical landscape ; and Henry Ward 
Beecher, regardless of the fact that some people think 
preachers never do have good sons, came from a fam- 
ily of preachers. I am frequently reminded that 
Beecher had his critics; but I also remember that no 
ten of his critics ever accomplished for this country 



2o6 THE DELIVERY OP A SPEECH ' 

and its religious and intellectual freedom what he ac- 
complished for it, and I personally have little sympa- 
thy for any critic who has done less in life than the 
man he criticises. Is it not fair, therefore, to include 
him in the list of hereditary genius? 

Lord Bacon's father was the Lord Keeper of the 
Great Seal and ranked as Chancellor, while the mother 
was "exquisitely skilled in Latin and Greek" and 
noted for her piety. The genius of the Darwin family 
is marked for several generations. Newton seems to 
be an exception, but there is no authentic family his- 
tory. Byron, the poet, could be loved and pitied more 
if people knew his family. A "strange, proud, half- 
mad" mother, an imprudent and vicious father, and a 
grandfather who was as restless as the poet, all plead 
for mercy on Lord Byron. 

William Pitt was but another example of "hitter-i- 
dittery". His father was at the head of the English 
government at the age of twenty-seven. The son 
gained control at the age of twenty-three and held 
England in his hand for seventeen years. No one 
taught him to be a statesman — he was born one. 
Hannibal, Alexander, Wellington, Caesar, all seem to 
have been peculiarly endowed. They did not choose. 
No credit attaches to birth, no shame. Praise belongs 
only to those who do bravely all they can. 

7. In the musical world the law seems to prevail 
most strikingly. Only two of the creative musicians 
seem to be exceptions. These are Mendelssohn and 
Meyerbeer, and all the rest seem to follow in their 
line, generation after generation. One of the musical 
journals of Germany gives the story of the Bachs, 



SOUR GRAPHS 207 

that great German family of creative musicians. At a 
family reunion there were present one hundred and 
twenty great musicians. The Dictionary of Music 
names fifty-seven renowned musicians in this family; 
and now there is not a single drop of this musical 
Bach blood in existence. They are lost to the world 
forever; and this loss was an international calamity. 

Think of the premium we pay for good music, — 
and most of it imported. When Patti was here the 
last time she received five thousand dollars a night, 
and in some of the large cities, eight thousand. During 
the season of 1908 we paid five thousand dollars a 
night to two separate singers for the entire season. 
To three others we paid forty-five hundred dollars a 
night, and to another singer we paid fifteen hundred 
dollars a night for as many nights as she would con- 
sent to sing on this side of the Atlantic. Consent to 
sing for fifteen hundred dollars a night ! We all know 
people who would do it for fifteen hundred dollars a 
year, — but no audience would listen to the music. 
Her rival received a thousand dollars a night for as 
many nights as London, Paris and St. Petersburg 
would spare her. Why? Because there is no competi- 
tion. There are less than ten great sopranos in all the 
world — not even one to a nation, with all their mil- 
lions of inhabitants. When we wish to hear superla- 
tive music we have to hear the singers en route. The 
voice that thrills an audience in Melbourne, Austra- 
lia, is known as Melba's voice around the world. 

The amateur reformer, the man who knows how to 
settle all problems without thinking, interrupts and 
gives a solution: "We will build musical conserva- 



208 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

tories, go to teaching music, and so meet the situa- 
tion." No! We will not meet it for centuries. Nor 
will we get the full benefit of our schools of music or 
our other educational institutions until we realize, bet- 
ter than we seem to now, their real purpose. The ob- 
ject of a school of music is not to make musicians, but 
to rear up a generation of young men and women who 
can understand music, listen to it appreciatively, per- 
haps interpret it in a measure, and so increase the joy 
of living. They would accomplish much if they did 
nothing more than to bring into the home life of the 
people one joy that does not debauch. 

8. The object of a school is not to produce schol- 
ars. The foolish theory that schools are creative in- 
stitutions has led to the expenditure of hundreds of 
millions of dollars to benefit what is known as the 
"top of the system", when the large expenditure 
should have been made near the bottom of the sys- 
tem where the millions go to school. All of this has 
been done on the foolish theory that you can "make 
the children over". The school is not a manufactur- 
ing plant, but a retail store of learning. The chil- 
dren customers carry away from the institution all 
their baskets of capacity will hold ; and when a greater 
respect for individuality comes, we will educate each 
child with the complete recognition of its powers, and 
so make the greatest ethical and industrial saving the 
world of education has ever known. The most dis- 
heartening condition recognized by all educators ex- 
ists today. The sad spectacle of thousands of young 
men who have been taken out of one classification, 
natural and normal to themselves, and led to failure 



. SOUR GRAPHS 209 

in abnormal conditions, is before us. The pettifogging 
lawyer, misdirected in the choice of his profession, is 
a menace to society; he drifts into cheap politics, be- 
comes the local grafter through no inherent fault of 
his own. The quack doctor never intended to be a 
quack. He hoped to shine in his profession; but 
someone planted a false hope in his breast and he took 
up the wrong profession. 

This sin to nature, this sin of misdirection, is also 
clearly seen in the realm of arts. The schools of elo- 
cution turn out hundreds of graduates, who are abso- 
lute failures both industrially and artistically. In 
the musical world there are examples numbered in the 
thousands. I have in mind a poor girl, whom some 
over-enthusiastic adviser told that she could become a 
concert player. Her ear is faulty to the point of dis- 
ease. The scientist would call her "sound blind" as he 
would call another "color blind". She has been 
"pounding away" at the piano for nine long, tedious, 
miserable, horrible years, — horrible to the neigh- 
bors. Faithful to a fault, diligent and hopeful, she 
produces heart-breaking results. A good friend asked 
the author not to tell the story of her failure, saying, 
"You might discourage some other young woman. If 
she keeps at it long enough, and is patient enough, she 
can learn how to play. Do you not believe it?" The 
answer, — yes. If she keeps at it long enough she 
can learn how, and that is what eternity is for; but 
we only live this life once, and there is not time enough 
on this side of the grave for her to learn" how. 

9. The pathos of the situation is this, with her as 
with all other failures, victims of misdirection, still 



2io THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

hopeful and confident in their own ability, they blame 
society and continue in their failure. If a man fails in 
business he says the town in which he is located is "no 
good". If the teacher fails in his control of a school 
he does not acknowledge his inability, but says the 
Board of Directors did not sustain him. If the min- 
ister empties a church, does he acknowledge that he 
cannot preach ? Never ! And even on the last Sunday, 
when he presents his resignation to the handful of the 
faithful followers left, he explains that the commu- 
nity is the most unresponsive and ungodly in which he 
ever labored. This poor girl's case symbolizes the en- 
tire situation. I met her at a party, where she told 
me her disappointments. These are her own words : 
"Isn't it strange that America is so slow to respond 
to any art? I have had the best of teachers, I have 
worked hard, and if somebody doesn't give me an 
opportunity soon to show what I can do with my art 
I will take things in my own hands, organize a con- 
cert company and go out and fill dates and get my 
money back." One feels like praying for the public. 
She continued : "I play the very best of music, the 
finest, classic music in the world, and sometimes the 
people don't listen. They whisper, talk, and laugh. 
Do you think that the public really appreciates good 
music?" One does not like to be impolite, but the case 
was desperate, and I mustered courage enough to re- 
ply: "Yes; I think the public appreciates good mu- 
sic — whenever it has the chance to hear it." This 
impertinence was bald enough to do some good, but it 
evidently failed, for she replied: "You do not know 
how much you encourage me" — and I did not dare 



SOUR GRAPHS 211 

to make it any plainer than that. A man doesn't like 
to say mean things to a woman — at least, not unless 
he is married to her. 

One does not like to criticise the individual. When 
the minister has spent nine years to prepare for the 
ministry, and is then a failure, even the bishop hesi- 
tates to tell him, and yet the wrong classification of 
individual effort is the greatest personal tragedy in 
human life. I did not wish to criticise this girl farther. 
She was moral, religious, earnest, and one whom a 
critic listed in the class of those who play the piano 
religiously — she never sat down to the keyboard 
without practicing according to the scriptures ; she 
obeys the scriptural injunction and never allows her 
"left hand to know what her right hand doeth". 

10. In passing to the history of the military world, 
we find that this law of blood prevails with a ven- 
geance. We find representatives of the Lee family 
marching to the Holy Land in the days of the Cru- 
sades — already leaders of men; in another genera- 
tion we find them crossing the bloody field of Hast- 
ings, — leaders of men : in another generation, march- 
ing under the banners of Henry the VIII, invading 
Scotland, — leaders of men : in another generation, on 
this side of the Atlantic ocean in revolutionary days, 
helping to make the Declaration of Independence ; and 
then we find them inarching across the sad and pa- 
thetic fields of our own civil war — on down to the 
island of Cuba, giving us, in our own day and genera- 
tion, Fitzhugh Lee. And from Cuba to Palestine, the 
Lees were leaders of men, marching under the flaunt- 
ing flags of war. They were a great family of fight- 



212 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

ers and leaders, just as the Bachs were a great family 
of musicians. I know that Cromwell and Grant are 
spoken of as exceptions to the rule of early service, 
but Napoleon Bonaparte, in his wild, erratic, mur- 
derous career, was not an exception in either partic- 
ular. 

His mother was a Corsican heroine. She 'was one 
of those women that can look into the face of physi- 
cal danger without winking. She knew what it was, 
by choice, to accompany the father in the disturbed 
states of the island. She saw men marching up and 
down clad in the paraphernalia of war. She heard 
the clatter and clash of arms, and in her own imagi- 
nation charged the fortress of the enemy, and had 
halted armies in defeat and disaster. It was out of 
the bone, blood, marrow, desire and ambition of this 
Corsican heroine that the first Napoleon was born. 
Born under the eagles of France, lifted to the breeze 
by smoke that was blazed and puffed from the can- 
non's mouth. 

And from that early time on, he was never satisfied 
until he heard the echo of this cannonade of the sky, 
reproduced in the rolling cannonade on the fields of 
war. At the age of nineteen he was a failure. He 
walked down the banks of the Seine river, contem- 
plating suicide. But four years later they gave him 
a chance to fight. He could do that. He reached out 
the strong right hand of his military will over the 
raging mob in the streets of Paris, and at the first ef- 
fort crushed it. Three years later, he was at the head 
of the entire army of Italy; and from that time on he 
conquered everything before him; until at last he lay 



SOUR GRAPES 213 

dying upon the island to which Great Britain chained 
him. The last words that came from the white lips 
of the dying Corsican were not of God or France or 
Josephine. The words, which showed the very in- 
most soul of the man, were these: "Head of the 
army ! Head of the army !" and even in death his 
fevered brain was marching his battalions on the 
frightful fields of war. 

11. If a man's first self is one of the ever present 
forces to determine what he shall be, there are mighty 
lessons to learn. All his education should be based 
upon his individuality, properly understood. If a 
man is born capable, much can be expected and should 
be demanded ; but when he is born inferior, he should 
be — ■ not excused but understood. Many men are 
failing as business men who could succeed in profes- 
sions, and many teachers and preachers should have 
been in other professions — or in none. Even horses 
have to be bred for their uses. 

Therefore, we say, blessed is the man who finds his 
work in life, and so large a part of the success of each 
individual depends upon this, that I am praying in my 
heart of hearts for the time to come, when in this 
great Republic of ours, in each community, there shall 
be at least one school, founded upon an absolutely in- 
dustrial basis, where the average boy can find him- 
self, and prepare for the real struggles of life; and 
that this machine-like process of educating all our 
children in the same way, boys and girls, and all kinds 
of boys and all kinds of girls, the weak and the strong, 
the sick and the well, the bright and the dull, shall 
pass from our educational history forever, and the in- 



214 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

dividual, the sacred individual, be given a chance to 
make a success of his own life. 

It might be interesting here to call a longer roll of 
honor of the world's celebrated and romantically 
great. But I must call attention to the fact that vice 
as well as virtue runs in families. The patriot had a 
right to believe that here on American soil we would 
raise at last a more perfect human race. Now, in 
several respects, we are leading all the other nations 
of the earth in our criminal and vice statistics. Pen- 
itentiaries and insane asylums are as prevalent as in 
the Old World; and in some localities the number of 
incompetent people sustained at public expense is ap- 
palling. This, too, in spite of the fact that here in 
America religion is most perfectly organized, educa- 
tion universally free, and general information cheap. 
In view of this condition, we have a right to empha- 
size the ethics of biology and show that mere moral- 
izing will not perfect the human race, that the recog- 
nition and application of the biological conditions of 
life development will help much, and to urge the ush- 
ering in of an era of "conscious evolution" for the 
human race. 

It is not an accident that some people go to jail. 
Vice is no more -accidental than virtue. It is as nat- 
ural for one man to go to jail as it is for another to go 
to the legislature. 

12. We have a large number of criminals because 
we breed them. A single family in New York State 
has produced nearly twelve hundred of the criminals 
in this country, and has cost the taxpayers one and 
one-quarter millions of dollars for arrests and deten- 



SOUR GRAPHS 215 

tions. The annual report of the convention of chari- 
ties published in 1890 gives the story of the Ishmael- 
ite tribe of criminals in Cincinnati, Ohio, and tells us 
that about twenty-two hundred and fifty petty , crim- 
inals sprung from this one line of blood. 

The only way to empty the jails and penitentiaries 
and insane asylums of this country is to allow a cer- 
tain class of people to die out. We have no machin- 
ery by which people can be made over, and the first 
step upward is to teach the normal and the healthy 
the laws of race preservation, and something of the 
dignity and beauty and sacredness .of the marriage in- 
stitution. There seems to be too little pride in the 
question of marriage. Anyone can get married. A 
young man may be behind the prison bars for murder. 
Some woman will carry him flowers, and, if the sheriff 
permits, will say the wedding vows, with no thought 
of the future or future generations. A young woman 
may be dying of tuberculosis, the family physician 
knows that she cannot possibly recover, yet some man 
will lead her to the marriage altar; and the minister, 
who preaches much on the sacredness of the home, will 
ask God's blessing on the union of two lives that can- 
not possibly be blessed under the laws of life. Our 
young people, well educated and trained, are ignorant 
of the one most important subject, the marriage rela- 
tion. They do not know how to marry. 

One couple out of every twelve under oath declare 
that for them married life is a failure, and are di- 
vorced. In the last twenty years one million couples 
under oath have sworn that married life was a fail- 
ure, and have been granted divorces. The amateur 



216 THB DBL1VBRY OF A SPBBCH 

reformer springs up and cries : "Down with this di- 
vorce evil ; it is the greatest disgrace of the nation ; 
change the divorce laws !" 

No ! We have done too much hasty reforming. The 
reformer should be a lighthouse builder and not a 
wrecker. To prevent a ship from going on the rocks 
is better than to snatch a plank from the waves. In 
the settling of the divorce problem the attack should 
be on the marriage side, not on the loose divorce laws. 
When people are happily and properly married there 
will be no divorces, even though divorce decrees could 
be had for the asking. I know something worse than 
divorce, and that is a bad home, and the longer it 
lasts the worse it is for society. To the one who says 
it is an awful thing to break up a home in the divorce 
court, the answer must ever be, that it is never done. 
Homes are broken up in the minds and hearts of men 
and women and they are usually wrecked before the 
court hears of the tragedy, and all the judge does is 
to hang out a little red flag to show where the wreck 
went down. Again, the critic quotes, "Whom God 
hath joined together let no man put asunder," and the 
humorist responds, "Whom God has tried to keep 
asunder, let no man join." 

13. We therefore propose a change that would 
make marriage more dignified and place it on a higher 
social basis. The change proposed has become known 
as the "Marriage Diploma Idea". The plan briefly 
stated is this: To grant marriage diplomas on these 
three conditions : 

First : A three months' public announcement of the 
engagement. Publicity is in itself an education. The 



SOUR GRAPHS 217 

public has a right to know of intended marriages. 
Above all things, marriage is not a purely personal 
matter. When the young man and woman in the 
mountains of the Hudson river foolishly elected to 
marry each other they started a family which has 
given us twelve hundred criminals and has cost us one 
and one-quarter millions of dollars. Society, against 
its will, has one and one-quarter million dollars in- 
vested in this family. We certainly have a right to 
be invited to the next wedding. 

Second: A medical certificate should be demanded 
by a County Board acting upon all marriage licenses 
before granting them. This would work a hardship 
on no one who is fit to marry. A certificate from the 
local family physician as a rule would meet the re- 
quirements, but such a law would be the means of 
preventing much heartache, sorrow, shame, disease 
and crime. To argue the matter would require a lec- 
ture in itself. A few pictures must serve. Some fif- 
teen years ago when I was lecturing in a Western city 
an intelligent young woman of twenty-two, a gradu- 
ate of the local high school, and one who for two 
years had attended the State College, sat in my audi- 
ence. She was engaged to marry the young man who 
accompanied her. 

This young man had been ill all the year. He was 
a neurotic: and yet this intelligent young woman, 
whose education in all other matters was much above 
the average, intended to sacrifice her life to this im- 
possible example of young manhood. Aroused by the 
argument of the evening, she told her lover that she 
would wait a year, that she must have time to think. 



2i8 THB DBLIVBRY OF A SPBBCH 

Five months later, with much distress, she came to 
me in a distant city to tell me that her lover was in the 
asylum, was pronounced incurable, and with tears of 
gratitude, to tell of her relief that she was not the 
wife of an insane man. 

A young man was placed in an insane asylum at 
eighteen. At twenty his parents took charge of him 
and tried to care for him at home ; eight months later 
he was married. The years rolled by; children were 
born ; later he was again sent to the asylum, and after- 
wards his two oldest sons were placed in cells adjoin- 
ing his; and the State is caring for three insane per- 
sons instead of one. 

In the light of these facts, and in the light of the 
fact that these are not exceptional stories, has not 
the time arrived, under the rule of conscious evolu- 
tion, for the human race to protect itself? 

14. Third: The three months' probation should be 
devoted to an education for domestic life. The period 
of three months, between the time of announcing an 
engagement and granting a diploma, could well be 
spent in this preparation. The marriage board in each 
county could have this matter in charge. The train- 
ing should be for young men, as well as for young 
women. Lessons on the mutual obligations, duties and 
relations of domestic life, could be taught with tre- 
mendous and saving advantages. The relation of the 
individuals, the relation of the home to the State, to 
society, and, above all, to the destiny of the human 
race, could be taught; and if such change were made 
in the marriiage laws, it is safe to say that at least 
ninety per cent, of the divorce evil would disappear. 



SOUR GRAPHS 219 

I dwell, therefore, upon marriage and the courtship 
which leads to it. When people are married it is too 
late to moralize. Like begets like. The child is the 
joint product of the lives, experience and ancestry of 
the father and mother. How important, then, that our 
boys and girls should mate well, with strong, healthy, 
good companions, and establish happy homes and de- 
sirable ones. How many children, could they have 
chosen, would have selected their fathers and moth- 
ers ? Some one has facetiously advised children to se- 
lect good fathers and mothers. Garfield, addressing 
the thousands of upturned faces in the great nominat- 
ing convention at Chicago, said : "Not here where the 
party banners flutter, not here in excitement and en- 
thusiasm, is the safety and glory of our nation, the 
dignity, the grandeur. The safety and beauty of the 
American republic is there where families sit in the 
shadow of the roof -tree and in the glow of the 
hearthstone. The strength of our nation is in the 
home." 

The hopes of the great and good, the longings of all 
statesmen who love their country, is for the home, 
where men and women, united in love, fitted in body, 
mind and disposition to become fathers and mothers, 
are married indeed. Every home of this sort is a 
blessing. There are too many unhappy and unfortu- 
nate ones. "Married in haste," unfitted by nature, and 
unprepared by education, "anybody and everybody", 
consumptives, half imbecile, insane, paupers, moral 
lepers, criminals, children, anybody, from the meanest 
soul whose blood is poisoned, whose imagination is a 
wilderness and whose heart is a hell, to the most cour- 



220 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

ageous and God-like hero of the world, all propagate 
the human race. 

"Anybody" may do to marry. "Anybody" will make 
a plaything to court. "Anybody" can wear dry goods 
and millinery. "Anybody" can run a tailor's bill. But 
only men and women can be true husbands and wives. 
Only men and women should become fathers and 
mothers, and live to counsel and to guide such rosy, 
healthy children as God shall send and give. 

15. Young people should be taught to place a pre- 
mium upon sturdy, rugged manhood and womanhood. 
Many a strong, healthy, plain but good girl is slighted. 
Many a worthy "fellow" with broad shoulders and 
heavy hands is willing to pour the honest devotion of 
his worshipful heart at the feet of some true woman. 
The sporty young man who runs in debt for his 
clothes, and the girl who forgets to assist an old 
mother in her home are not desirable. 

The ideas of home life and matrimony should be the 
highest. I bring a home from the world of realism, in 
settings of an old-fashioned farm house in the West- 
ern Reserve. Trees surround it, and an old scattered 
orchard drops its ripening fruits on the bosom of the 
hills. We open the gate, that is, draw back the bars, 
and walk over the old lawn where the croquet balls 
used to click, while the children's laughter echoed 
from the old bank barn. We turn the corner where 
the old-fashioned rose bush grew, scraggy and lux- 
uriant. There on the old porch where the morning- 
glories twine, sit an old man of seventy-three and an 
old women of sixty-eight, courting. They rise to 
greet us and tell us the story of their life: how as a 



SOUR GRAPES 221 

young man and woman they started together, hand in 
hand and heart to heart; how they stood by each 
other, and helped each other, sustained, comforted, 
inspired, marched through life's cares and bore its 
burdens together. How they mingled their tears with 
the white flowers that lay upon the little coffin of that 
child which sleeps in the village churchyard, where 
the myrtle of summer and the white snows of winter 
are its sacred covering. How their oldest daughter 
was given to a home as happy as their own. How the 
boys, one by one, went out to fill positions of useful- 
ness and prosperity. 

We see them sitting hand in hand and heart to 
heart, bodies dying and souls glowing. They have 
marched up the hillslopes of life together ; now we see 
them almost at he summit where the twilight glories 
of old age mingle with the morning purples of eter- 
nity — hand in hand and heart to heart from the be- 
ginning to the end. 

The objection is sometimes raised that all of this 
savors of "blue-bloodism". To which we must an- 
swer that in the realm of science we recognize no blue 
ribbons of society. The stamp of aristocracy, in the 
kingdom of biology, is perfect health, and a set of 
nerves that do not twitch and tremble, muscles that 
are elastic and free, a heart beat that is normal in its 
rhythm, and brain cells, undiseased. Many fail to un- 
derstand the laws of heredity, the laws of breeding, 
because they think and observe superficially. Genius 
may be born in poverty, but it is never born of impov- 
erished blood. A Lincoln may be born in the forests 
of Kentucky, a Garfield march toward the White 



222 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

House on the tow path of an Ohio canal, and imbe- 
cility may be born in a palace, when the parents in the 
palace have become pale, anaemic and diseased. 

1 6. What has been said, has been said to link the 
word responsibility to the words home and marriage 
and love ; to emphasize the fact that the age of con- 
scious evolution has arrived. It is a century since 
Charles Darwin was born and lived and taught. It 
is not too soon to emphasize the ethics of biology. 

I wish now to emphasize a sweeter word, that grows 
directly out of this "Sour Grape" doctrine — the 
word "mercy". If it is a fact, that every man has a 
character peculiar to himself when he is born, it is 
also true that the rest of us should take that character 
into account. 

All men have a character, a personality, when they 
are born. Every man we see affects us by form and 
features peculiar to himself. People embody tastes, 
dispositions, habits, impulses, passions, vices and vir- 
tues peculiarly their own. No two people are exactly 
alike. Each differs from the other in size, weight, 
height, complexion, mental forces, and inherent tastes. 

They have some of these differences from the be- 
ginning, and in addition to the inherent character, the 
one given to them by their ancestors, they have an- 
other, a second, moulded and fashioned by the con- 
ditions and moral forces surrounding the plastic souls 
of childhood. People have as little choice over this 
second character as over the first. Babyhood and 
youth are both subject to forces omnipotent but not 
always divinely good. Some men are born cripples, 
some are made such. Some are born imbeciles, some 



SOUR GRAPHS 223 

are dwarfed by conditions and some are ruined by 
themselves — that is, indeed, "original sin". Some 
men have three characters, the two of which I have 
spoken, and one which they have the courage to 
make. These are God's heroes and heroines ; men and 
women who battle against vice, disease, perverted im- 
pulses and runaway passions ; the men and women 
who march to victory, conquering even the forces that 
are inherent. There should be more of these, — 

"Who break their birth's invidious bar 
And grasp the skirts of happy chance, 
And breast the blows of circumstance, 
And grapple with their evil star." 

In studying life, in measuring character, in punish- 
ing vice and in rewarding virtue, we have paid too 
little attention to heredity and all that it means and 
involves. 

We judge people too easily. We see what they are, 
but forget their beginnings. We do not credit them 
with what they have done. We do not know the 
weary road they have been traveling. It is a long way 
from the cabin to the White House, from the canal 
to the capitol. 

17. A man's personality is a composite, complex 
thing. It rests upon the threefold basis of heredity, 
environment and self-education. It embodies the 
blood and nerves, imagination and intelligence, and 
history of his ancestors. It is touched by the angelic 
smile of a mother's love, the stern rebuke of a digni- 
fied father, the sweet graces of a fond sister, the wise 
counsel of proud brothers, and inspiration of wise 



224 THB DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

masters. The blows and buffets of adverse circum- 
stances affect it. The weariness born of hard labor 
and the sweet benediction of rest are needed. The 
landscape of one's childhood creeps into it; hills and 
valleys where boyhood romped ; love songs of wooing 
birds ; the buzz of busy bees ; the quiet influences of 
farm life, as well as the graceful curves of a sea 
beach where the pulse-beats of the Creator are heard 
in the breaking waves that lave the feet of the rever- 
ent fisherboy. Whittier's poetry is full of the scenes 
of his childhood. Robert Burns reached his best ef- 
forts when writing about the plow field and the farm 
life of old Scotland. 

It has taken the world five thousand years to learn 
that it is only a coward that would strike a cripple. 
Now, is it going to take another five thousand years 
to teach the world to treat with mercy the intellec- 
tually and morally crippled of the human race? All 
recognize the fact that it is the duty of the strong 
man to push along the cart of the cripple ; but little of 
mercy and tenderness have been shown the morally 
delinquent cripples. 

As yet we seem to have recognized only the physi- 
cal deformities in our code of charity. Over yonder 
is a family, the children of which all have black hair. 
This we understand. We say it is a legacy from grand- 
parents and parents, a case of "hitteridittery". And 
yonder is a family, the children of which all have red 
hair, and again we understand ; there is no criticism or 
tendency to moralize. The fact is accepted; it is a 
question of "Sour Grapes", a "chip off the old block". 
And yonder is a family of varied complexions. Some 



SOUR GRAPHS 225 

of the children have dark hair, some light; and we 
say here is a mingling of national strains. You do not 
find the varied complexions among the negroes, the 
Japanese, the Chinese, but only among the peoples 
that have intermarried. And as one looks out on the 
audiences up and down the country and sees the heads 
without hair, he is led to believe there will be many 
children born in the next generation without any. 

18. Yonder is a family, the children of which have 
black hearts instead of black hair. Now, there seems 
to be a lack of understanding or sympathy. The un- 
der dog, morally and intellectually, has had little sym- 
pathy. The physically ill are given the best room in 
the house, the physician's care, the faithful nurse, the 
best of food, are shielded from annoyance; they re- 
ceive the kiss and caress of merciful understanding. 
For the morally crippled we have stone walls and the 
iron bars. 

To those who have given the matter little thought, 
it may have sounded cruel to say that the only way 
to empty the jails, penitentiaries, and insane asylums 
of the country, is to allow a certain degenerate class 
of people to die out; and yet, such a suggestion has less 
of cruelty and more of Christianity in it than the 
present method of treating the criminal class. Stone 
walls and iron bars do not make bad people good. It 
is high time that we substitute criminal reservations 
for jails and penitentiaries; and detain our delin- 
quents in normal surroundings, in the free, open-air 
life; establish a wise system of parole for the ones 
who are making an honest effort at reform; and es- 
tablish this uniform punishment for the rest— namely, 



226 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

prevent marriage and reproduction among them; and 
so let the criminal class disappear. 

An extended plea of mercy for the unfortunate is 
not here necessary. Lips, a thousand times more elo- 
quent than mine, are making this plea upon the Amer- 
ican platform. I speak of the work of the bighearted 
Ben Lindsey of Denver, Colo., the friend of the bad 
boy, the man who believes in child culture; in a 
chance for "Mickey" of the streets. And the plea for 
the adult criminal is made, as no one else could make 
it, by Maude Ballington Booth. It is not given to all 
to help in the great national reform movements, but all 
have an opportunity to put into practice one bit of 
moralizing that is pertinent to this question. We can 
learn to be good to the people that are unfortunate 
enough to live under the same roof with us. 

It is easy to allow other people to "get on our 
nerves". Perhaps all of us are frequently annoyed 
by the conduct, words and manner of our associates, 
and few of us take time to think how tedious and an- 
noying we may be to others. They have to listen to 
our voices, see our way of doing things. They are an- 
noyed by our tastes and demands. There is really a 
great deal of unhappiness in the world that is un- 
necessary, unhappiness that comes because we do not 
cultivate the fine art of appreciation as much as we 
do the folly of criticism. Now, the way to be good to 
other people is to be good to them "in their way". A 
friend of mine states this moral well. He says : "I 
would rather be understood for two minutes than be 
loved all day." 

19. We know love never made a happy home un- 



SOUR GRAPHS 227 

less it was coupled with thoughtfulness and courtesy. 
Affection itself may become a source of deep sorrow 
and bring intensest pain to other people's lives, un- 
less it is considerate, respectful, wise. Even the doc- 
trine of Christian love was not operative until St. 
Paul defined and explained it with an entire chapter. 
Hate can make no one unhappy except the one who 
hates. The saddest-faced woman in a community was 
made sad through love. Love is the only passion that 
brings deep sorrow into life, — tears, heartache and 
scars. Nor is it the disappointing love alone that 
hurts. This woman's husband may love her unto 
death. She would die for the man to whom she is 
wed, and still a failure to understand the individual 
needs and desires may leave the lives unblessed and 
full of sorrow. 

"It isn't the shame and it isn't the blame 
That stings like a white-hot brand. 
It's coming to know that (they) never could know, 
And never could understand." 

The highest compliment we can pay to any individ- 
ual is the compliment of complete understanding. Mary 
is to be made happy in Mary's way, — Charlie in 
his, — Mother in hers, — and "Daddie" in his. And 
we of the younger generation might well learn how 
to be more appreciative of the generation that is 
passing. 

After calling attention to the impertinence and con- 
duct approaching insolence with which the younger 
generation sometimes treat the passing one in our own 



228' THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

America, the following protest was made by a young 
and newly-married couple: "It's very well to plead 
for old age, but you can't do much for old people. 
They are set in their ways, old fogy in their notions. 
We invited grandfather to share our cottage in the 
city when grandmother died. He seemed to enjoy 
the change, and walked about the village carrying an 
old wooden stick as a cane. We sympathized with the 
situation, and bought him a new, gold-headed walking 
stick. He set it in the corner, and hasn't used it once. 
Now, what are you going to do with the old people?" 
There are some things you must remember; and 
if you open your home to give its hospitality to old 
age you must remember that old age has a history. 
That old wooden stick Grandfather cut from a tree 
under which he and Grandmother stood fifty years 
ago, the day they were betrothed back there in the 
forests. You thought he could throw it away and use 
your new, gold-headed and varnished stick; but 
Grandfather is a gentleman. He is a gentleman of 
the old school, and can't forget. 

20. The wife says, "I had just fixed up our little 
sitting-room and he brought with him an old-fashioned 
rocker from the farm. It must have been manufac- 
tured with an ax after dark. He didn't even want me 
to paint it, so that it would blend with the color scheme 
of my room." 

Oh, but did you forget the wrinkled hands that 
rested on the arms of that chair the last winter that 
Grandfather and Grandmother sat side by side before 
the open fireplace, out on the farm, and rocked the 
days and the hours away, talking and rocking, rocking 



SOUR GRAPHS 229 

and talking ? Why ! Grandfather couldn't smoke his 
evening pipe in any other chair, or dream the dreams 
of the future, or "see the purple lights that dawn on 
the eternal hills, where the twilight glories of old age 
mingled with the morning purples of eternity". 

It takes some thought, some consideration, this cul- 
tivation of the social art of being good to others. We 
men must learn how to be good to women, and to be 
good to them in their way. 

Here is the story of a man who has been married 
for forty years. He certainly had time to learn how 
to be good to his wife ; and he loved her devotedly. He 
was "big and good-natured". He made up his mind 
to present her the finest anniversary Christmas pres- 
ent he had ever given her. Like all other women, 
there were numbers of little things that she wanted, 
but never felt free to purchase. Her good-meaning 
husband saved up his spare money for three months 
and then — bought her a dress. Oh, the tragedy of 
the dresses that husbands pick out for their wives ! Any 
man who will buy his wife a dress for a Christmas 
present, — and not allow her to pick it out — is in- 
discreet. Christmas morning he was the exuberantly 
happy one in the family. He gathered the whole fam- 
ily about the table and brought out the big bundle and 
undid it with triumph. That dress was a gorgeous 
splendor. Solomon in all his glory never saw any- 
thing half so gorgeous. It was such a dress — as only 
a man could have picked out ; and it was a color this 
poor woman had detested all her life. She looked at 
it in dismay — even the children were silent — and 
when she thought of herself wearing it in public, she 



2$0 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

gave a scream of alarm. But it was Christmas; she 
put her arms about his neck, and was going to kiss 
him and thank him; but even she couldn't go that far. 
Her face fell upon his shoulder, and she broke into 
sobs. While he was so happy at what he had done, 
so proud of his purchase and his taste, that he thought 
she must be crying for joy. He took her in his big, 
awkward arms, and encouraged her by saying: "Why, 
God bless you, wife, don't cry. Why, — you de- 
served it. If I had known you wanted a dress like 
this that badly I would have given it to you long ago. 
Go, — put it right on, — and wear it out, — wear it 
every day; and as soon as it is worn out I'll get you 
another one just like it." 

21. What's the use? This man loved this woman, 
but he never thought about her. He thought of her 
but never about her. What's the use of being loved 
by people who never take time to think us over? If 
you are going to make a woman happy you must 
make her happy in her way. Why, even a man likes 
to be understood. 

Of course, the question of appreciation with a man 
is not so important. We men are not supposed to 
suffer keenly. We have no sensibilities. We are just 
crude, coarse, virile, masculine animals. But even a 
man will notice a sentiment if you make it plain 
enough ; and as one of our plainsmen puts it "Even a 
man wouldn't like to get a side-saddle for a Christ- 
mas present." 

Some one should make an effective plea for man's 
domestic rights. There is a worldwide movement on 
to give woman her political rights, and woman has 



SOUR GRAPHS 231 

suffered and lost much, but she has not lost in the 
political realm anything half so sacred or important as 
man has lost in the feminization of the American 
homes. From an architectural standpoint and a dec- 
orative standpoint our homes are feminine. There are 
few pictures on the walls that a man would have 
chosen; and the furniture in its outlines and treat- 
ment and use is feminine — chairs bought by women 
for women never fit a man. The woman in defense, 
may say that the man in the modern home has his li- 
brary or den that he can call his own. That is as 
far as it goes — he can call it his own, but twice a 
week the woman will invade it and hide everything a 
man owns. A man needs little space, but what he 
needs should be sacred. When a man puts a thing in 
a place, six weeks, six months or six years later, he 
should find it there. The one domestic instinct you 
can depend on in a man is this : When a man puts a 
thing in any place he wants to find it where he put 
it. Or where he thinks he put it. A plea for man's 
domestic rights would probably do little good. If he 
asserts himself and buys a stand for his little home, 
where he can lay his newspapers and magazines and 
glasses, the very next day when he comes to look at 
that stand, there will be a doily on the top of it. There 
is no remedy just now. "Cheer up ; there is no hope," 
is the best advice. 

This statement would not be made in behalf of the 
man and masculine rights in the home if it were not 
for the American boy. But nearly all of the mascu- 
line amusements, the games that men like to play, have 
been driven from the homes. Men have spent hun- 



232 THE DBUVBRY OF A SPBBCH 

dreds of millions of dollars to erect lodges and club 
rooms that would never have been built if houses had 
been masculine as well as feminine in their arrange- 
ment and atmosphere. Now, the man has provided 
for himself, and the public amusement hall has taken 
the place of domestic games and pleasures. 

22. The Y. M. C. A. is caring for the young man, 
but the young boy is still without his rights. He grows 
up on the streets and is cursed because he fails at the 
task of making "bricks without straw". At the age 
of from five to fifteen the American boys' club house 
is the public street. Some of the cities have even 
failed to provide playgrounds and parks, and the mor- 
alists wonder at the degeneracy of the American boy. 
It is a wonder that he is as good as he is. 

A mother, who is somewhat typical, tried to explain 
by saying that boys do not take care of their things ; 
that they do not appreciate what is done for them, 
and that they are the most ungrateful little animals in 
nature, and then gave her own experience. She said : 
"There is a boy and a girl in my family. I made up 
my mind that there should be no jealousy between 
them. There were two rooms in the house, and I fit- 
ted them up — one for the boy and one for the girl. 
My daughter was perfectly delighted; and the boy 
never acted so mean about anything in his life as he 
did about that room, in spite of the fact that I fixed 
them up just exactly alike." 

And this poor, good mother doesn't know yet why 
her boy was disgusted. Why couldn't she fix this room 
up for her boy in the boy way ? On the bed she could 
have put a fine leather spread, left the carpet from the 



SOUR GRAPHS 233 

floor, put in a punching bag that he could hit and take 
out his spite on, give him some indian clubs and dumb 
bells, fish lines, hooks, poles, thread, rope, pulleys, old 
pieces of machinery, wheels, horseshoes, stilts, bows 
and arrows, cross-guns, balls and bats, screws, rings, 
nails and — some things. 

We know, of course, that he would have taken care 
of them in the boy's way. Everyone knows how or- 
derly boys are. A boy wants a set of tools like his 
father's. He will put them in the same place every 
time, where they are handy, and he can easily put his 
hands on them, and always in the same place — al- 
ways in the same place — on the floor. And then his 
mother, if she has nerves instead of good sense, will 
look at the tools on the floor, and cry out: "I just 
can't have it — this disorder — I can't have it." 

Why not? The woman has the hall, the parlor, the 
sitting-room, the dining-room, the library and music- 
room, if the house is large; the kitchen, the pantry, 
her own room and the girls', as she wants them. Why 
can't the boy have a place ten feet square, dedicated 
to himself, and have it as he wants it? But the good 
woman says : "No good housekeeper — " Ah ! there 
is the trouble. You can hire a colored porter to keep 
a house, but it takes a sensible mother to keep a home ; 
and my particular plea is for the home — not for the 
perfect housekeeping. 

23. It is frequently asked, why a plea for Heredity 
or Sour Grapes instead of a plea for Environment is 
presented. The answer is that heredity is so inevita- 
ble, so final. The humorist has asked the young peo- 
ple to pick out their own fathers and mothers; but it 



234 TH E DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

ever remains true that when young womanhood ac- 
cepts a husband, the bride chooses the father of the 
children ; and the young man who goes courting, picks 
out the mother of the children that must bear his 
name; and that choice is final. The saddest specta- 
cle in all this world of ours is the sight of a child 
that blushes for the parent. It seems unnecessary 
just now to make a plea for environment, for all the 
social forces are organized to emphasize that word. 
It has been emphasized, but as yet we have not se- 
cured satisfactory results. The author chose to em- 
phasize the word ''heredity" because people can choose 
their environment. 

If a man finds the city where he lives is not the best 
in the matter of climate or moral conditions, for the 
rearing of his children, he can move. If he is rich 
he can afford it, and if he is poor it won't cost him 
anything. Not only that, but the environment of a 
community can be changed. If the intelligent people 
of any community so desire, by organization they may 
make an environment that will be healthy and normal 
for their children. It seems wise, therefore, in con- 
cluding the argument, to appeal to something deeper 
than environment — the character spirit out of which 
good social environment springs — the fight spirit — 
courage. 

The man who finds he has a tendency to tuberculo- 
sis does not need to accept an office position. He can 
work in God's out-of-doors and take advantage of his 
own weakness. The crippled boy does not need to go 
in for the athletic career. He can take advantage of 
his own weakness. The man with a weak will does 



SOUR GRAPHS 235 

not need to do mission work in the slums, nor work in 
a store next to a bar. He can fight, and fight intelli- 
gently. To tell people that their characters are the 
product of environment is to lose the fight. It is bet- 
ter to say to the young man : "Get into the battle line 
and if you get a bullet in the lungs, and the froth 
blood is on your lips, when the bugle sounds the 
charge, start forward ; and if you must come to the 
earth, strike it, a corpse. The brave soldier dies on 
his feet. Die fighting, and die at the last ditch." 

24. Every young man who is discouraged in the 
battle of life, needs to hear the story of Charlie — and 
if Charlie made the fight he made, the rest of us can 
make ours. This young boy came down to the uni- 
versity, thin-chested, large-eyed and nervous. His 
father was a scholar, and the son had a good brain; 
but his mind was flowering in an enfeebled body. We 
gave him a medical examination and found that our 
first duty was to his body. We led him to the gymna- 
sium and brought him face to face with a chest 
weight. 

He put his thin, white fingers about the handles, and 
started to draw them back, but cried out, "I can't do 
that. It hurts every muscle in my body." The hand 
of faith and courage was upon his shoulder in a mo- 
ment, and the instructor was ready with the reply : 
"I thought you came here to be a man. You have a 
good brain and you can't afford to waste it in a weak 
body. Your medical record shows that for generations 
there has been this physical weakness in your family. 
Now, take hold of the handles, and when I give the 
count you are not to let go." 



236 THB DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

Thin lips came down over tightly clenched teeth, 
and we heard the boy mutter: "If you say it can be 
done, I will do it." He drew the handles steadily 
back, and God's fresh air rushed in and filled the cells 
of his lungs. It was fight, day after day; fight, week 
after week ; fight, month after month ; fight, year after 
year. He pulled the handles through all the various 
motions, until his head was erect, his shoulders back, 
and he walked up and down the streets of that col- 
leeg town looking like a man; — and then came the 
week of graduation. 

The boys were in the gymnasium for the last time. 
They all marched down the old gymnasium to the 
rhythm of music, swinging easily, and in single file, 
crossed over and down the opposite side, each turning 
gracefully in his place for the tests of endurance. 
Charlie, the last in the line, planted his feet on the 
floor, braced his knees, and when the count was given 
for the test of endurance, the one, two and three of 
command, he drew the handle steadily back; the 
blood was surging now from finger tips to toes; the 
heart was making merry music ; the flush on the neck 
and cheek and temple showed how the red corpuscles 
had multiplied. Again and again to the steady one, 
two and three he drew the handles back, and smiled 
into the face of the old machine as much as to say, 
"I have conquered you." 

"Out of the night that covers me, 
Black as the pit from pole to pole, 
I thank whatever gods may be 
For my unconquerable soul. 



SOUR GRAPES 237 

"In the fell clutch of circumstance 
I have not winced nor cried aloud; 
Under the bludgeoning of chance 
My head is bloody but unbowed. 

"It matters not how straight the gate, 

How charged with punishment the scroll ; 
I am the master of my fate ; 
I am the captain of my soul.'' 



THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH 
By Henry W. Grady 

Henry W. Grady was born in Athens, Georgia, April 24, 
1850. He was graduated from the State University of Geor- 
gia and took post-graduate work at the University of Vir- 
ginia. He became a journalist, being connected with the 
New York Herald as Southern correspondent. Later he 
edited the Rome (Georgia) Daily Commercial and the Atlanta 
Herald. In 1880 he bought a part interest in the Atlanta Con- 
stitution and became its editor, which position he retained 
until his death, December 23, 1889. 

Notwithstanding the fact that journalism was his life 
work, he is best known as an orator. His career in this 
respect was short but brilliant. He studied hard while in 
college to perfect his speaking style, this being the main object 
of his study at the University of Virginia. It was not until 
1886, however, that he came into national prominence as an 
orator. His speech on "The New South," delivered before 
the New England Society at its annual banquet in New York 
City, won him a national reputation over night. Perhaps his 
best known speech is "The Race Problem in the South," 
delivered at the annual banquet of the Boston Merchants' 
Association. Joel Chandler Harris says of it that it "reaches 
the high water mark of modern oratory. It was his last, as 
it was his best, contribution to the higher politics of the 
country." 

Mr. Grady's extended and varied experience as a journalist 
gave him an exceptional background for his work as an ora- 
tor. His passionate love for the South, his marvelous com- 
mand of language, his sense of humor, and his instinctive 
musical sense made him the most popular spokesman that "The 
New South" has had. An untimely death cut short a career that 
promised to be among the most brilliant that this country has 
known. He died of a cold contracted in making the last and 



RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH 239 

greatest of his efforts. Ten days after "The Race Problem 
in the South" was given in Boston, Grady lay dead at his 
home in Atlanta. 

The following two speeches are printed with the permis- 
sion of Professor E. D. Shurter, of the University of Texas, 
who has edited the complete works of Mr. Grady. 

I. Mr. President: — Bidden by your invitation to 
a discussion of the race problem — forbidden by oc- 
casion to make a political speech — I appreciate, in 
trying to reconcile orders with propriety, the perplex- 
ity of the little maid, who, bidden to learn to swim, 
was yet adjured, "Now, go, my darling; hang your 
clothes on a hickory limb, and don't go near the wa- 
ter." 

The stoutest apostle of the Church, they say, is the 
missionary, and the missionary, wherever he unfurls 
his flag, will never find himself in deeper need of 
unction and address than I, bidden tonight to plant the 
standard of a Southern Democrat in Boston's ban- 
quet hall, and to discuss the problem of the races in 
the home of Phillips and of Sumner. But, Mr. Pres- 
ident, if a purpose to speak in perfect frankness and 
sincerity; if earnest understanding of the vast inter- 
ests involved ; if a consecrating sense of what disaster 
may follow further misunderstanding and estrange- 
ment ; if these may be counted to steady undisciplined 
speech and to strengthen an untried arm — then, sir, 
I shall find the courage to proceed. 

Happy am I that this mission has brought my feet 
at last to press New England's historic soil and my 
eyes to the knowledge of her beauty and her thrift. 
Here within touch of Plymouth Rock and Bunker 



240 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

Hill — where Webster thundered and Longfellow 
sang, Emerson thought and Channing preached — 
here, in the cradle of American letters and almost of 
American liberty, I hasten to make the obeisance that 
every American owes New England when first he 
stands uncovered in her mighty presence. Strange ap- 
parition ! This stern and unique figure — carved from 
the ocean and the wilderness — its majesty kindling 
and growing amid the storms of winter and of wars — 
until at last the gloom was broken, its beauty disclosed 
in the sunshine, and the heroic workers rested at its 
base — while startled kings and emperors gazed and 
marveled that from the rude touch of this handful 
cast on a bleak and unknown shore should have come 
the embodied genius of human government and the 
perfected model of human liberty ! God bless the mem- 
ory of those immortal workers, and prosper the for- 
tunes of their living sons — and perpetuate the in- 
spiration of their handiwork. 

2. Two years ago, sir, I spoke some words in New 
York that caught the attention of the North. As I 
stand here to reiterate, as I have done everywhere, 
every word I then uttered — to declare that the sen- 
timents I then avowed were universally approved in 
the South — I realize that the confidence begotten by 
that speech is largely responsible for my presence here 
tonight. I should dishonor myself if I betrayed that 
confidence by uttering one insincere word, or by with- 
holding one essential element of the truth. Apropos 
of this last, let me confess, Mr. President, before the 
praise of New England has died on my lips, that I 
believe the best product of her present life is the pro- 



RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH 241 

cession of seventeen thousand Vermont Democrats 
that for twenty-two years, undiminished by death, un- 
requited by birth or conversion, have marched over 
their rugged hills, cast their Democratic ballots and 
gone back home to pray for their unregenerate neigh- 
bors, and awake to read the record of twenty-five 
thousand Republican majority. May the God of the 
helpless and the heroic help them, and may their 
sturdy tribe increase ! 

Far to the south, Mr. President, separated from this 
section by a line — once defined in irrepressible dif- 
ference, once traced in fratricidal blood, and now, 
thank God, but a vanishing shadow — lies the fairest 
and richest domain of this earth. It is the home of a 
brave and hospitable people. There is centered all that 
can please or prosper humankind. A perfect climate 
above a fertile soil yields to the husbandman every 
product of the temperate zone. There, by night the 
cotton whitens beneath the stars, and by day the 
wheat locks the sunshine in its bearded sheaf. In the 
same field the clover steals the fragrance of the wind, 
and the tobacco catches the quick aroma of the rains. 
There are mountains stored with exhaustless treas- 
ures; forests — vast and primeval; and rivers that, 
tumbling or loitering, run wanton to the sea. Of the 
three essential items of all industries — cotton, iron 
and wood — that region has easy control. In cot- 
ton, a fixed monopoly — in iron, proven supremacy — 
in timber, the reserve supply of the Republic. 

3. From this assured and permanent advantage, 
against which artificial conditions cannot much longer 
prevail, has grown an amazing system of industries. 



242 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

Not maintained by human contrivance of tariff or cap- 
ital, afar off from the fullest and cheapest source of 
supply, but resting in divine assurance, within touch 
of field and mine and forest — not set amid costly 
farms from which competition has driven the farmer 
in despair, but amid cheap and sunny lands, rich with 
agriculture, to which neither season nor soil has set 
a limit — this system of industries is mounting to a 
splendor that shall dazzle and illumine the world. 
That, sir, is the picture and the promise of my home — 
a land better and fairer than I have told you, and yet 
but fit setting in its material excellence for the loyal 
and gentle quality of its citizenship. Against that, 
sir, we have New England, recruiting the Republic 
from its sturdy loins, shaking from its overcrowded 
hives new swarms of workers, and touching this land 
all over with its energy and its courage. And yet — 
while in the Eldorado of which I have told you but 
fifteen per cent, of its lands are cultivated, its mines 
scarcely touched, and its population so scant that, 
were it set equidistant, the sound of the human voice 
could not be heard from Virginia to Texas — while 
on the threshold of nearly every house in New Eng- 
land stands a son, seeking, with troubled eyes, some 
new land in which to carry his modest patrimony, the 
strange fact remains that in 1880 the South had fewer 
Northern-born citizens than she had in 1870 — fewer 
in '70 than in '60. Why is this ? Why is it, sir, though 
the section line be now but a mist that the breath may 
dispel, fewer men of the North have crossed it over 
to the South, than when it was crimson with the best 



RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH 243 

blood of the Republic, or even when the slaveholder 
stood guard every inch of its way? 

There can be but one answer. It is the very prob- 
lem we are now to consider. The key that opens that 
problem will unlock to the world the fairest half of 
this Republic, and free the halted feet of thousands 
whose eyes are already kindling with its beauty. Bet- 
ter than this, it will open the hearts of brothers for 
thirty years estranged, and clasp in lasting comrade- 
ship a million hands now witheld in doubt. Nothing, 
sir, but this problem and the suspicions it breeds, hin- 
ders a clear understanding and a perfect union. Noth- 
ing else stands between us and such love as bound 
Georgia and Massachusetts at Valley Forge and York- 
town, chastened by the sacrifices of Manassas and 
Gettysburg, and illumined with the coming of better 
work and a nobler destiny than was ever wrought with 
the sword or sought at the cannon's mouth. 

4. If this does not invite your patient hearing to- 
night — hear one thing more. My people, your broth- 
ers in the South — brothers in blood, in destiny, in 
all that is best in our past and future — are so beset 
with this problem that their very existence depends on 
its right solution. Nor are they wholly to blame for 
its presence. The slave-ships of the Republic sailed 
from your ports, the slaves worked in our fields. You 
will not defend the traffic, nor I the institution. But 
I do here declare that in its wise and humane ad- 
ministration in lifting the slave to heights of which 
he had not dreamed in his savage home, and in giving 
him a happiness he has not yet found in freedom, our 
fathers left their sons a saving and excellent heritage. 



244 



THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 



In the storm of war this institution was lost. I thank 
God as heartily as you do that human slavery is gone 
forever from American soil. But the free man re- 
mains. With him, a problem without precedent or 
parallel. Note its appalling conditions. Two utterly 
dissimilar races on the same soil — with equal po- 
litical and civil rights — almost equal in numbers, but 
terribly unequal in intelligence and responsibility — 
each pledged against fusion — one for a century in 
servitude to the other, and freed at last by a desolat- 
ing war, the experiment sought by neither but ap- 
proached by both with doubt, these are the conditions. 
Under these, adverse at every point, we are required 
to carry these two races in peace and honor to the 
end. 

5. Never, sir, has such a task been given to mortal 
stewardship. Never before in this Republic has the 
white race divided on the rights of an alien race. The 
red man was cut down as a weed because he hindered 
the way of the American citizen. The yellow man 
was shut out of this Republic because he is an alien, 
and inferior. The red man was owner of the land — 
the yellow man was highly civilized and assimilable — 
but they hindered both sections and are gone! But 
the black man, affecting but one section, is clothed 
with every privilege of government and pinned to the 
soil, and my people commanded to make good at any 
hazard, and at any cost, his full and equal heirship of 
American privilege and prosperity. It matters not 
that every other race has been routed or excluded 
without rhyme or reason. It matters not that wher- 
ever the whites and blacks have touched, in any era 



RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH 245 

or in any clime, there has been an irreconcilable vio- 
lence. It matters not that no two races, however sim- 
ilar, have lived anywhere, at any time, on the same 
soil with equal rights in peace ! In spite of these 
things we are commanded to make good this change 
of American policy which has not perhaps changed 
American prejudice — to make certain here what has 
elsewhere been impossible between whites and blacks 
— and to reverse, under the very worst conditions, the 
universal verdict of racial history. And driven, sir, 
to this superhuman task with an impatience that 
brooks no delay — a rigor that accepts no excuse — 
and a suspicion that discourages frankness and sin- 
cerity. We do not shrink from this trial. It is so in- 
terwoven with our industrial fabric that we cannot 
disentangle it if we would — so bound up in our hon- 
orable obligation to the world, that we would not if 
we could. Can we solve it? The God who gave it 
into our hands, He alone can know. But this the 
weakest and wisest of us do know; we cannot solve 
it with less than your tolerant and patient sympa- 
thy — with less than the knowledge that the blood 
that runs in your veins is our blood — and that, when 
we have done our best, whether the issue be lost or 
won, we shall feel your strong arms about us and 
hear the beating of your approving hearts ! 

6. The resolute, clear-headed, broad-minded men 
of the South, the men whose genius made glorious 
every page of the first seventy years of American his- 
tory — whose courage and fortitude you tested in five 
years of the fiercest war — whose energy has made 
bricks without straw and spread splendor amid the 



246 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

ashes of their war-wasted homes — these men wear 
this problem in their hearts and brains, by day and by 
night. They realize, as you cannot, what this prob- 
lem means — what they owe to this kindly and de- 
pendent race — the measure of their debt to the world 
in whose despite they defended and maintained slav- 
ery. And though their feet are hindered in its under- 
growth, and their march cumbered with its burdens, 
they have lost neither the patience from which comes 
clearness, nor the faith from which comes courage. 
Nor, sir, when in passionate moments is disclosed to 
them that vague and awful shadow, with its lurid 
abysses and its crimson stains, into which I pray God 
they may never go, are they struck with more of ap- 
prehension than is needed to complete their consecra- 
tion ! 

Such is the temper of my people. But what of the 
problem itself? Mr. President, we need not go one 
step further unless you concede right here that the 
people I speak for are as honest, as sensible and as 
just as your people, seeking as earnestly as you would 
in their place to rightly solve the problem that touches 
them at every vital point. If you insist that they are 
ruffians, blindly striving with bludgeon and shotgun 
to plunder and oppress a race, then I shall sacrifice my 
self-respect and tax your patience in vain. But ad- 
mit that they are men of common sense and common 
honesty, wisely modifying an environment they can- 
not wholly disregard — guiding and controlling as 
best they can the vicious and irresponsible of either 
race — compensating error with frankness, and re- 
trieving in patience what they lost in passion, and con- 



RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH 247 

scious all the time that wrong means ruin — admit 
this, and we may reach an understanding tonight. 

7. The President of the United States, in his late 
message to Congress, discussing the plea that the 
South should be left to solve this problem, asks : "Are 
they at work upon it? What solution do they offer? 
When will the black man cast a free ballot? When 
will he have the civil rights that are his?" I shall not 
here protest against a partisanry that, for the first time 
in our history, in the time of peace, has stamped with 
the great seal of our government a stigma upon the 
people of a great and loyal section; though I grate- 
fully remember that the great dead soldier, who held 
the helm of State for the eight stormiest years of re- 
construction, never found need for such a step; and 
though there is no personal sacrifice I would not make 
to remove this cruel and unjust imputation on my 
people from the archives of my country ! But, sir, 
backed by a record, on every page of which is prog- 
ress, I venture to make earnest and respectful answer 
to the questions that are asked. We give to the world 
this year a crop of 7,500,000 bales of cotton, worth 
$450,000,000, and its cash equivalent in grain, grasses 
and fruit. This enormous crop could not have come 
from the hands of sullen and discontented labor. It 
comes from peaceful fields, in which laughter and 
gossip rise above the hum of industry, and content- 
ment runs with the singing plough. It is claimed that 
this ignorant labor is defrauded of its just hire. I 
present the tax books of Georgia, which show that 
the negro, twenty-five years ago a slave, has in 
Georgia alone $10,000,000 of assessed property, worth 



248 THB DBUVBRY OF A SPEBCH 

twice that much. Does not that record honor him and 
vindicate his neighbors? 

8. What people, penniless, illiterate, has done so 
well? For every Afro-American agitator, stirring 
the strife in which alone he prospers, I can show you 
a thousand negroes, happy in their cabin homes, till- 
ing their own land by day, and at night taking from 
the lips of their children the helpful message their 
State sends them from the schoolhouse door. And the 
schoolhouse itself bears testimony. In Georgia we 
added last year $250,000 to the school fund, making a 
total of more than $1,000,000 — and this in the face 
of prejudice not yet conquered and of the fact that 
the whites are assessed for $368,000,000, the blacks 
for $10,000,000, and yet forty-nine per cent, of the 
beneficiaries are black children; and in the doubt of 
many wise men if education helps, or can help, our 
problem. Charleston, with her taxable values cut 
half in two since i860, pays more in proportion for 
public schools than Boston. Although it is easier to 
give much out of much than little out of little, the 
South, with one-seventh of the taxable property of 
the country, with relatively larger debt, having re- 
ceived only one-twelfth as much public land, and hav- 
ing back of its tax books none of the half billion of 
bonds that enrich the North — and though it pays an- 
nually $26,000,000 to your section as pensions — yet 
gives nearly one-sixth of the public school fund. The 
South since 1865 has spent $122,000,000 in education, 
and this year is pledged to $37,000,000 more for State 
and city schools, although the blacks, paying one-thir- 
tieth of the taxes, get nearly one-half of the fund. Go 



RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH 249 

into our fields and see whites and blacks working 
side by side; on our buildings in the same squad; in 
our shops at the same forge. Often the blacks crowd 
the whites from work, or lower wages by their 
greater need and simpler habits, and yet are permit- 
ted, because we want to bar them from no avenue in 
which their feet are fitted to tread. They could not 
there be elected orators of white universities, as they 
have been here, but they do enter there a hundred use- 
ful trades that are closed against them here. We 
hold it better and wiser to tend the weeds in the gar- 
den than to water the exotic in the window. 

9. In the South there are negro lawyers, teachers, 
editors, dentists, doctors, preachers, multiplying with 
the increasing ability of their race to support them. 
In villages and towns they have their military com- 
panies equipped from the armories of the State, their 
churches and societies built and supported largely by 
their neighbors. What is the testimony of the courts? 
In penal legislation we have steadily reduced felonies 
to misdemeanors, and have led the world in mitigat- 
ing punishment for crime, that we might save, as far 
as possible, this dependent race from its own weak- 
ness. In our penitentiary record sixty per cent of the 
prosecutors are negroes, and in every court the negro 
criminal strikes the colored juror, that white men may 
judge his case. 

In the North, one negro in every 466 is in jail — in 
the South, only one in 1865. In the North the percent- 
age of negro prisoners is six times as great as that 
of native whites ; in the South, only four times as 
great. If prejudice wrongs him in Southern courts, 



250 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

the record shows it to be deeper in Northern courts. 
I assert here, and a bar as intelligent and upright as 
the bar of Massachusetts will solemnly indorse my 
assertion, that in the Southern courts, from highest to 
lowest, pleading for life, liberty or property, the ne- 
gro has distinct advantage because he is a negro, apt 
to be overreached, oppressed — and that this advan- 
tage reaches from the juror in making his verdict to 
the judge in measuring his sentence. 

Now, Mr. President, can it be seriously maintained 
that we are terrorizing the people from whose willing 
hands comes every year $1,000,000,000 of farm 
crops? Or have robbed a people who, twenty-five 
years from unrewarded slavery, have amassed in one 
state $20,000,000 of property? Or that we intend to 
oppress the people we are arming every day? Or de- 
ceive them, when we are educating them to the utmost 
limit of our ability? Or outlaw them, when we work 
side by side with them? Or re-enslave them under 
legal forms, when for their benefit we have even im- 
prudently narrowed the limit of felonies and miti- 
gated the severity of law? My fellow-countrymen, as 
you yourselves may sometimes have to appeal at the 
bar of human judgment for justice and for right, give 
to my people tonight the fair and unanswerable con- 
clusion of these incontestable facts. 

10. But it is claimed that under this fair seeming 
there is disorder and violence. This I admit. And 
there will be until there is one ideal community on 
earth after which we may pattern. But how widely 
is it misjudged ! It is hard to measure with exactness 
whatever touches the negro. His helplessness, his is- 



RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH 251 

olation, his century of servitude, — these dispose us 
to emphasize and magnify his wrongs. This disposi- 
tion, inflamed by prejudice and partisanry, has led 
to injustice and delusion. Lawless men may ravage 
a county in Iowa and it is accepted as an incident — 
in the South, a drunken row is declared to be the fixed 
habit of the community. Regulators may whip vag- 
abonds in Indiana by platoons and it scarcely arrests 
attention — a chance collision in the South among 
relatively the same classes is gravely accepted as evi- 
dence that one race is destroying the other. We might 
as well claim that the Union was ungrateful to the 
colored soldier who followed its flag because a Grand 
Army post in Connecticut closed its doors to a negro 
veteran as for you to give racial significance to every 
incident in the South, or to accept exceptional grounds 
as the rule of our society. I am not one of those who 
becloud American honor with the parade of the out- 
rages of either section, and belie American character 
by declaring them to be significant and representa- 
tive. I prefer to maintain that they are neither, and 
stand for nothing but the passion and sin of our poor 
fallen humanity. If society, like a machine, were no 
stronger than its weakest part, I should despair of 
both sections. But, knowing that society, sentient 
and responsible in every fiber, can mend and repair 
until the whole has the strength of the best, I de- 
spair of neither. These gentlemen who come with me 
here, knit into Georgia's busy life as they are, never 
saw, I dare assert, an outrage committed on a negro ! 
And if they did, no one of you would be swifter to 
prevent or punish. It is through them, and the men 



252 



THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 



and women who think with them — making ntne- 
tenths of every Southern community — that these 
two races have been carried thus far with less of vio- 
lence than would have been possible anywhere else on 
earth. And in their fairness and courage and stead- 
fastness — more than in all the laws that can be 
passed, or all the bayonets that can be mustered — 
is the hope of our future. 

ii. When will the blacks cast a free ballot? When 
ignorance anywhere is not dominated by the will of 
the intelligent; when the laborer anywhere casts a 
vote unhindered by his boss; when the vote of the 
poor anywhere is not influenced by the power of the 
rich; when the strong and steadfast do not every- 
where control the suffrage of the weak and shiftless — ■ 
then, and not until then, will the ballot of the negro be 
free. The white people of the South are banded, Mr. 
President, not in prejudice against the blacks — not 
in sectional estrangement — not in the hope of po- 
litical dominion — but in a deep and abiding necessity. 
Here is this vast ignorant and purchasable vote — 
clannish, credulous, impulsive, and passionate — ■ 
tempting every art of the demagogue, but insensible 
to the appeal of the statesman. Wrongly started, in 
that it was led into alienation from its neighbor and 
taught to rely on the protection of an outside force, 
it cannot be merged and lost in the two great parties 
through logical currents, for it lacks political convic- 
tion and even that information on which conviction 
must be based. It must remain a faction — strong 
enough in every community to control on the slightest 
division of the whites. Under that division it becomes 



RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH 253 

the prey of the cunning and unscrupulous of both par- 
ties. Its credulity is imposed upon, its patience in- 
flamed, its cupidity tempted, its impulses misdirected 
— and even its superstition made to play its part in a 
campaign in which every interest of society is jeo- 
pardized and every approach to the ballot-box de- 
bauched. It is against such campaigns as this — the 
folly and the bitterness and the danger of which every 
Southern community has drunk deeply — that the 
white people of the South are banded together. Just 
as you in Massachusetts would be banded if 300.000 
men, not one in a hundred able to read his ballot — 
banded in race instinct, holding against you the mem- 
ory of a century of slavery, taught by your late con- 
querors to distrust and oppose you, had already tra- 
vestied legislation from our State House, and in every 
species of folly or villiany had wasted your substance 
and exhausted your credit. 

12. But admitting the right of the whites to unite 
against this tremendous menace, we are challenged 
with the smallness of our vote. This has long been flip- 
pantly charged to be evidence and has now been sol- 
emnly and ofricially declared to be proof of political 
turpitude and baseness on our part. Let us see. Vir- 
ginia — a state now under fierce assault for this al- 
leged crime — cast in 1888 seventy-five per cent, of 
her vote; Massachusetts, the State in which I speak, 
sixty per cent, of her vote. Was it suppression in Vir- 
ginia and natural causes in Massachusetts ? Last month 
Virginia cast sixty-nine per cent, of her vote; and 
Massachusetts, fighting in every district, cast only 
forty-nine per cent, of hers. If Virginia is condemned 



254 



THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 



because thirty-one per cent, of her vote was silent, how 
shall this State escape, in which fifty-one per cent, was 
dumb? Let us enlarge this comparison. The sixteen 
Southern States in '88 cast sixty-seven per cent, of 
their total vote — the six New England States but sixty- 
three per cent, of theirs. By what fair rule shall the 
stigma be put upon one section while the other es- 
capes? A congressional election in New York last 
week, with the polling places in touch of every voter, 
brought out only 6,000 votes of 28,000 — and the lack 
of opposition is assigned as the natural cause. In a 
district in my State, in which an opposition speech 
has not been heard in ten years and the polling places 
are miles apart — under the unfair reasoning of which 
my section has been a constant victim — the small 
vote is charged to be proof of forcible suppression. In 
Virginia an average majority of 10,000, by a hopeless 
division of the minority, was raised to 40,000; in 
Iowa, in the same election, a majority of 32,000 was 
wiped out and an opposition majority of 8,000 was es- 
tablished. The change of 40,000 votes in Iowa is ac- 
cepted as political revolution — in Virginia an in- 
crease of 30,000 on a safe majority is declared to be 
proof of political fraud. 

13. It is deplorable, sir, that in both sections a larger 
percentage of the vote is not regularly cast. But more 
inexplicable that this should be so in New England 
than in the South. What invites the negro to the bal- 
lot-box? He of all men knows that it has promised 
him most and yielded him least. His first appeal to 
suffrage was the promise of "forty acres and a mule" ; 
his second, the threat that Democratic success meant 



RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH 255 

his re-enslavement. Both have been proved false in 
his experience. He looked for a home, and he got the 
Freedman's Bank. He fought under promise of the 
loaf, and in victory was denied the crumbs. Dis- 
couraged and deceived, he has realized at last that his 
best friends are his neighbors with whom his lot is 
cast, and whose prosperity is bound up in his — and 
that he has gained nothing in politics to compensate 
the loss of their confidence and sympathy that is at 
last his best and enduring hope. And so, without 
leaders or organization — and lacking the resolute 
heroism of my party friends in Vermont that make 
their hopeless march over the hills a high and inspir- 
ing pilgrimage — he shrewdly measures the occa- 
sional agitator, balances his little account with poli- 
tics, touches up his mule, and jogs down the furrow, 
letting the mad world wag as it will. 

The negro voter can never control in the South, and 
it would be well if partisans at the North would un- 
derstand this. I have seen the white people of a State 
set about by black hosts until their fate seemed sealed. 
But, sir, some brave men, banding them together, 
would rise as Elisha rose in beleagured Samaria, and, 
touching their eyes with faith, bid them look abroad to 
see the very air "filled with the chariots of Israel and 
the horsemen thereof. 

14. If there is any human force that cannot be with- 
stood, it is the power of the banded intelligence and 
responsibility of a free community. Against it. num- 
bers and corruption cannot prevail. It cannot be for- 
bidden in the law, or divorced in force. It is the 
inalienable right of every free community — the just 



256 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

and righteous safeguard against an ignorant or corrupt 
suffrage. It is on this, sir, that we rely in the South. 
Not the cowardly menace of mask or shotgun, but the 
peaceful majesty of intelligence and responsibility, 
massed and unified for the protection of its homes and 
the preservation of its liberty. That, sir, is our "reli- 
ance and our hope", and against it all the powers of 
earth shall not prevail. It is just as certain that Vir- 
ginia would come back to the unchallenged control of 
her white race — that before the moral and material 
power of her people once more unified, opposition 
would crumble until its last desperate leader was left 
alone, vainly striving to rally his disordered hosts — 
as that night should fade in the kindling glory of the 
sun. You may pass force bills, but they will not 
avail. You may surrender your own liberties to fed- 
eral election law; you may submit, in fear of a ne- 
cessity that does not exist, that the very form of this 
government may be changed; you may invite federal 
interference with the New England town meeting, that 
has been for a hundred years the guarantee of local 
government in America — this old State which holds 
in its charter the boast that it "is a free and independ- 
ent commonwealth" — it may deliver its election ma- 
chinery into the hands of the government it helped to 
create — but never, sir, will a single State of this 
Union, North or South, be delivered again to the con- 
trol of an ignorant and inferior race. We wrested our 
state governments from negro supremacy when the 
Federal drumbeat rolled closer to the ballot-box, and 
Federal bayonets hedged it deeper about than will ever 
again be permitted in this free government. But, sir, 



RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH 257 

though the cannon of this Republic thundered in every 
voting district in the South, we still should find in the 
mercy of God the means and the courage to prevent 
its re-establishment. 

15. I regret, sir, that my section, hindered with this 
problem, stands in seeming estrangement to the 
North. If, sir, any man will point out to me a path 
down which the white people of the South, divided, 
may walk in peace and honor, I will take that path, 
though I take it alone — for at its end,, and nowhere 
else, I fear, is to be found the full prosperity of my 
section and the full restoration of this Union. But, 
sir, if the negro had not been enfranchised, the South 
would have been divided and the Republic united. His 
enfranchisement — against which I enter no protest — 
holds the South united and compact. What solution, 
then, can we offer for the problem? Time alone 
can disclose it to us. We simply report progress, and 
ask your patience. If the problem be solved at all — 
and I firmly believe it will, though nowhere else has 
it been — it will be solved by the people -most deeply 
bound in interest, most deeply pledged in honor to its 
solution. I had rather see my people render back this 
question rightly solved than to see them gather all the 
spoils over which faction has contended since Cataline 
conspired and Caesar fought. Meantime we treat the 
negro fairly, measuring to him justice in the fullness 
the strong should give to the weak, and leading him in 
the steadfast ways of citizenship, that he may no 
longer be the prey of the unscrupulous and the sport 
of the thoughtless. We open to him every pursuit in 
which he can prosper, and seek to broaden his train- 



258 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

ing and capacity. We seek to hold his confidence and 
friendship — and to pin him to the soil with owner- 
ship, that he may catch in the fire of his own hearth- 
stone that sense of responsibility the shiftless can 
never know. And we gather him into that alliance 
of intelligence and responsibility that, though it now 
runs close to racial lines, welcomes the responsible and 
intelligent of any race. By this course, confirmed in 
our judgment, and justified in the progress already 
made, we hope to progress slowly but surely to the 
end. 

1 6. The love we feel for that race, you cannot meas- 
ure nor comprehend. As I attest it here, the spirit of 
my old black mammy, from her home up there, looks 
down to bless, and through the tumult of this night 
steals the sweet music of her croonings as thirty years 
ago she held me in her black arms and led me smiling 
to sleep. This scene vanishes as I speak, and I catch 
a vision of an old Southern home with its lofty pil- 
lars, and its white pigeons fluttering down through the 
golden air. I see women with strained and anxious 
faces, and children alert yet helpless. I see night come 
down with its dangers and its apprehensions, and in a 
big homely room I feel on my tired head the touch 
of loving hands — now worn and wrinkled, but fairer 
to me yet than the hands of mortal woman, and 
stronger yet to lead me than the hands of mortal 
man — as they lay a mother's blessing there, while at 
her knees — the truest altar I yet have found — I 
thank God that she is safe in her sanctuary, because 
her slaves, sentinel in the silent cabin, or guard at her 



RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH 259 

chamber door, put a black man's loyalty between her 
and danger. 

I catch another vision. The crisis of battle — a 
soldier, struck, staggering, fallen. I see a slave, scuf- 
fling through the smoke, winding his black arms about 
the fallen form; reckless of hurtling death — bending 
his trusty face to catch the words that tremble on the 
stricken lips, so wrestling meantime with agony that 
he would lay down his life in his master's stead. I see 
him by the weary bedside, ministering with uncom- 
plaining patience, praying with all his humble heart 
that God will lift his master up, until death comes in 
mercy and in honor to still the soldier's agony and seal 
the soldier's life. I see him by the open grave — 
mute, motionless, uncovered, suffering for the death 
of him who in life fought against his freedom. I see 
him, when the mould is heaped and the great drama 
of his life is closed, turn away and with downcast 
eyes and uncertain step start out into new and strange 
fields, faltering, struggling, but moving on, until his 
shambling figure is lost in the light of this better and 
brighter day. And from the grave comes a voice, 
saying, "Follow him ! put your arms about him in his 
need, even as he put his about me. Be his friend as 
he was mine. And out into this new world — strange 
to me as to him, dazzling, bewildering both — I fol- 
low ! And may God forget my people — when they 
forget these! 

17. Whatever the future may hold for them, 
whether they plod along in the servitude from which 
they have never been lifted since the Cyrenian was 
laid hold upon by the Roman soldiers, and made to 



a6o THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

bear the cross of the fainting Christ — whether they 
find homes again in Africa, and thus hasten the proph- 
ecy of the psalmist, who said, "And suddenly Ethiopia 
shall hold out her hands unto God" — whether for- 
ever dislocated and separate, they remain a weak peo- 
ple, beset by stronger, and exist, as the Turk, who 
lives in the jealousy rather than in the conscience of 
Europe — or whether in this miraculous Republic they 
break through the caste of twenty centuries, and, bely- 
ing universal history, reach the full stature of citizen- 
ship, and in peace maintain it — we shall give them 
uttermost justice and abiding friendship. And what- 
ever we do, into whatever seeming estrangement we 
may be driven, nothing shall disturb the love we beat* 
this Republic, or mitigate our consecration to its' serv- 
ice. I stand here, Mr. President, to profess no new 
loyalty. When General Lee, whose heart was the tem- 
ple of our hopes, and whose arm was clothed with our 
strength, renewed his allegiance to this Government at 
Appomattox, he spoke from a heart too great to be 
false, and he spoke for every honest man from Mary- 
land to Texas. From that day to this Hamilcar has 
nowhere in the South sworn young Hannibal to hatred 
and vengeance, but everywhere to loyalty and to love. 
Witness the veteran standing at the base of a Confed- 
erate monument, above the graves of his comrades, 
his empty sleeve tossing in the April wind, adjuring 
the young men about him to serve as earnest and loyal 
citizens the Government against which their fathers 
fought. This message, delivered from that sacred 
presence, has gone home to the hearts of my fellows ! 
And, sir, I declare here, if physical courage be always 



RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH 261 

equal to human aspiration, that they would die, sir, if 
need be, to restore this Republic their fathers fought 
to dissolve. 

18. Such, Mr. President, is this problem as we see 
it, such is the temper in which we approach it, such the 
progress made. What do we ask of you? First, pa- 
tience; out of this alone can come perfect work. 
Second, confidence ; in this alone can you judge fairly. 
Third, sympathy ; in this you can help us best. 

Fourth, give us your sons as hostages. When you 
plant your capital in millions, send your sons that 
they may know how true are our hearts and may help 
to swell the Anglo-Saxon current until it can carry 
without danger this black infusion. Fifth, loyalty to 
the Republic — for there is sectionalism in loyalty as 
in estrangement. Give us the broad and perfect loyalty 
that loves and trusts Georgia alike with Massachu- 
setts — that knows no South, no North, no East, no 
West, but endears with equal and patriotic love every 
foot of our soil, every State of our Union. 

A mighty duty, sir, and a mighty inspiration impels 
every one of us tonight to lose in patriotic consecra- 
tion whatever estranges, whatever divides. We, sir, 
are Americans — and we stand for human liberty ! 
The uplifting force of the American idea is under 
every throne on earth. France, Brazil — these are 
our victories. To redeem the earth from kingcraft 
and oppression — this is our mission ! And we shall 
not fail. God has sown in our soil the seed of His 
millennial harvest, and He will not lay the sickle to the 
ripening crop until His full and perfect day has come. 
Our history, sir, has been a constant and expanding 



262 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

miracle, from Plymouth Rock and Jamestown, all the 
way — aye, even from the hour when from the voice- 
less and traceless ocean a new world rose to the sight 
of the inspired sailor. As we approach the fourth 
centennial of that stupendous day — when the old 
world will come to marvel and to learn amid our 
gathered treasures — let us resolve to crown the mir- 
acles of our past with the spectacle of a Republic, 
compact, united, indissoluble in the bonds of love — 
loving from the Lakes to the Gulf — the wounds of 
war healed in every heart as on every hill, serene and 
resplendent at the summit of human achievement and 
earthly glory, blazing out the path and making clear 
the way up which all the nations of the earth must 
come in God's appointed time ! 



THE NEW SOUTH 
Henry W. Grady 

19. "There was a South of slavery and secession: 
that South is dead. There is a South of union and 
freedom: that South, thank God, is living, breathing, 
growing every hour." These words, delivered from 
the immortal lips of Benjamin H. Hill, at Tammany 
Hall in 1866, true then and truer now, I shall make 
my text tonight. 

I beg that you will bring your full faith in Ameri- 
can fairness and frankness to judgment upon what I 
shall say. There was an old preacher once who told 
some boys of the Bible lesson he was going to read 
in the morning. The boys, finding the place, glued to- 
gether the connecting pages. The next morning he 
read at the bottom of one page, "When Noah was 
one hundred and twenty years old he took unto him- 
self a wife who was" — then turning the page — 
"140 cubits long, 40 cubits wide, built of gopher wood, 
and covered with pitch inside and out." He was nat- 
urally puzzled at this. He read it again, verified it, 
and then said: "My friends, this is the first time I 
ever met this in the Bible, but I accept this as an evi- 
dence of the assertion that we are fearfully and won- 
derfully made." If I could get you to hold such faith 
tonight, I could proceed cheerfully to the task I oth- 
erwise approach with a sense of consecration. 

My friend Dr. Talmage has told you that the typi- 
cal American has yet to come. Eet me tell you that 



264 TH % DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

he has already come. Great types, like valuable plants, 
are slow to flower and fruit. But from the union of 
these colonies, Puritans and Cavaliers, — from the 
straightening of their purposes and the crossing of 
their blood, slow perfecting through a century, — 
came he who stands as the first typical American, the 
first who comprehended within himself all the strength 
and gentleness, all the majesty and grace of this re- 
public — Abraham Lincoln. 

He was the sum of Puritan and Cavalier, for in his 
ardent nature were fused the virtues of both and in 
the depths of his great soul the faults of both were 
lost. He was greater than Puritan, greater than Cav- 
alier, in that he was American, and that in his honest 
form were first gathered the vast and thrilling forces 
of his ideal government — charging it with such tre- 
mendous meaning and so elevating it above human suf- 
fering that martyrdom, though infamously aimed, 
came as a fitting crown to a life consecrated from the 
cradle to human liberty. Let us, each cherishing the 
traditions and honoring his fathers, build with rever- 
ent hands to the type of this simple but sublime life, 
in which all types are honored ; and in our common 
glory as Americans there will be plenty and to spare 
for your forefathers and for mine. 

20. In speaking to the toast with which you have 
honored me, I accept the term, "The New South", as 
in no sense disparaging to the Old. Dear to me, sir, 
is the home of my childhood and the traditions of my 
people. I would not, if I could, dim the glory they 
won in peace and war, or by word or deed take aught 
from the splendor and grace of their civilization — 



THE NEW SOUTH 265 

never equalled and perhaps never to be equalled in its 
chivalric strength and grace. There is a New South, 
not through protest against the Old, but because of 
new conditions, new adjustments, and, if you please, 
new ideas and aspirations. It is to this that I address 
myself. 

Dr. Talmage has drawn for you, with a master's 
hand, the picture of your returning armies. He has 
told you how, in the pomp and circumstance of war 
they came back to you, marching with proud and vic- 
torious tread, reading their glory in a nation's eyes ! 
Will you bear with me while I tell you of another army 
that sought its home at the close of the late war; an 
army that marched home in defeat and not in vic- 
tory; in pathos and not in splendor; but in glory that 
equalled yours, and to hearts as loving as ever wel- 
comed heroes home? Let me picture to you the foot- 
sore Confederate soldier, as, buttoning up in his faded 
gray jacket the parole which was to bear testimony to 
his children of his fidelity and faith, he turned his face 
southward from Appomattox in April, 1865. 

Think of him as — ragged, half-starved, heavy- 
hearted, enfeebled by want and wounds, having 
fought to exhaustion — he surrenders his gun, wrings 
the hands of his comrades in silence, and lifting his 
tear-stained and pallid face for the last time to the 
graves that dot old Virginia hills, pulls his gray cap 
over his brow and begins the slow and painful jour- 
ney. What does he find — let me ask you who went 
to your homes eager to find, in the welcome you had 
justly earned, full payment for four years' sacri- 
fice — what does he find when, having followed the 



266 THB DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

battle-stained cross against overwhelming odds, dread- 
ing death not half so much as surrender, he reaches 
the home he left so prosperous and beautiful? 

He finds his house in ruins, his farm devastated, his 
slaves free, his stock killed, his barns empty, his trade 
destroyed, his money worthless, his social system, 
feudal in its magnificence, swept away; his people 
without law or legal status, his comrades slain, and 
the burdens of others heavy on his shoulders. Crushed 
by defeat, his very traditions are gone. Without 
money, credit, employment, material, or training; and 
besides all this confronted with the gravest problem 
that ever met human intelligence — the establishing 
of a status for the vast body of his liberated slaves. 

21. What does he do — this hero in gray with a 
heart of gold? Does he sit down in sullenness and 
despair? Not for a day. Surely God who had strip- 
ped him of his prosperity, inspired him in his adver- 
sity. As ruin was never before so overwhelming, 
never was restoration swifter. The soldier stepped 
from the trenches into the furrow; horses that had 
charged Federal guns marched before the plow, and 
fields that ran red with human blood in April were 
green with the harvest in June ; women reared in lux- 
ury cut up their dresses and made breeches for their 
husbands, and with a patience and heroism that fit 
women always as a garment gave their hands to work. 
There was little bitterness in all this. Cheerfulness and 
frankness prevailed. 

I want to say to General Sherman, — who is con- 
sidered an able man in our parts, though some peo- 
ple think he is a kind of careless man about fire, — 



THB NBW SOUTH 267 

that from the ashes he left us in 1864 we have raised 
a brave and beautiful city ; that somehow or other we 
have caught the sunshine in the bricks and mortar of 
our homes, and have builded therein not one ignoble 
prejudice or memory. 

We have learned that one Northern immigrant is 
worth fifty foreigners; and have smoothed the path 
to southward, wiped out the place where Mason and 
Dixon's line used to be, and hung out our latch-string 
to you and yours. We have reached the point that 
marks perfect harmony in every household, when the 
husband confesses that the pies which his wife cooks 
are as good as those his mother used to bake ; and we 
admit that the sun shines as brightly and the moon as 
softly as it did before the war. We have established 
thrift in city and country. We have fallen in love 
with our work. We have restored comfort to homes 
from which culture and elegance never departed. We 
have let economy take root and spread among us as 
rank as the crabgrass which sprung from Sherman's 
cavalry camps, until we are ready to lay odds on the 
Georgia Yankee — as he manufactures relics, of the 
battlefield in a one-story shanty and squeezes pure olive 
oil out of his cottonseed — against any Down-Easter 
that ever swapped wooden nutmegs for flannel saus- 
age in the valleys of Vermont. Above all, we know 
that we have achieved in these "piping times of peace" 
a fuller independence for the South than that which 
our fathers sought to win in the forum by their eleo- 
quence, or compel in the field by their swords. 

22. But what of the negro? 

We understand that when Lincoln signed the Eman - 



268 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

cipation Proclamation, your victory was assured, for 
he then committed you to the cause of human liberty, 
against which the arms of man cannot prevail ; while 
those of our statesmen who trusted to make slavery 
the "corner-stone" of the Confederacy, doomed us to 
defeat as far as they could, committing us to a cause 
that reason could not defend or the sword maintain 
in the sight of advancing civilization. 

The relations of the Southern people with the ne- 
gro are close and cordial. We remember with what 
fidelity for four years he guarded our defenseless 
women and children, whose husbands and fathers were 
fighting against his freedom. To his eternal credit be 
it said that whenever he struck a blow for his own 
liberty he fought in open battle, and when at last he 
raised his black and humble hands that the shackles 
might be struck off, those hands were innocent of 
wrong against his helpless charges, and worthy to be 
taken in loving grasp by every man who honors loyalty 
and devotion. 

Ruffians have maltreated him, rascals have misled 
him, philanthropists established a bank for him, but the 
South, with the North, protests against injustice to 
this simple and sincere people. To liberty and en- 
franchisement is as far as law can carry the negro. 
The rest must be left to conscience and common sense. 
It must be left to those among whom his lot is cast, 
with whom he is indissolubly connected, and whose 
prosperity depends upon their possessing his intelli- 
gent sympathy and confidence. Faith has been kept 
with him, in spite of calumnious assertions to the con- 
trary by those who assume to speak for us, or by 



THE NEW SOUTH 269 

frank opponents. Faith will be kept with him in the 
future, if the South holds her reason and integrity. 

But have we kept faith with you? In the fullest 
sense, yes. When Lee surrendered — I don't say when 
Johnston surrendered, because I understand he still 
alludes to the time when he met General Sherman last 
as the time when he determined to abandon any fur- 
ther prosecution of the struggle; when Lee surren- 
dered, I say, and Johnston quit, the South became, and 
has since been, loyal to this Union. 

We fought hard enough to know that we were 
whipped, and in perfect frankness accept as final the 
arbitrament of the sword to which we had appealed. 

23. The Old South rested everything on slavery and 
agriculture, unconscious that these could neither give 
nor maintain healthy growth. The New South pre- 
sents a perfect democracy, the oligarchs leading in the 
popular movement : a social system compact and 
closely knitted, less splendid on the surface, but 
stronger at the core ; a hundred farms for every plan- 
tation, fifty homes for every palace ; and a diversified 
industry that meets the complex need of this complex 
age. 

The New South is enamored of her new work. Her 
soul is stirred with the breath of a new life. The light 
of a grander day is falling fair on her face. She is 
thrilling with the consciousness of growing power and 
prosperity. As she stands upright, full statured and 
equal among the people of the earth, breathing the 
keen air and looking out upon the expanded horizon, 
she understands that her emancipation came because 
through the inscrutable wisdom of God her honest 



270 



THE DELIVERY OP A SPEECH 



purpose was crossed, and her brave armies were 
beaten. 

This is said in no spirit of time-serving or apology. 
The South has nothing for which to apologize. She 
believes that the late struggle between the States was 
war and not rebellion, revolution and not conspiracy; 
and that her convictions were as honest as yours. I 
should be unjust to the dauntless spirit of the South 
and to my own convictions if I did not make this plain 
in this presence. The South has nothing to take back. 
In my native town of Athens is a monument that 
crowns its central hill — a plain, white shaft. Deep 
cut into its shining side is a name dear to me above 
the names of men — that of a brave and simple man 
who died in a brave and simple faith. Not for all the 
glories of New England, from Plymouth Rock all 
the way, would I exchange the heritage he left me in 
his soldier's death. To the foot of that shaft I shall 
send my children's children to reverence him who 
ennobled their name with his heroic blood. But, sir, 
speaking from the shadow of that memory which I 
honor as I do nothing else on earth, I say that the 
cause in which he suffered and for which he gave his 
life was adjudged by higher and fuller wisdom than 
his or mine; and I am glad that the omniscient God 
held the balance of battle in his Almighty hand, and 
that human slavery was swept forever from Ameri- 
can soil — the American Union saved from the wreck 
of war. 

24. This message, Mr. President, comes to you 
from consecrated ground. Every foot of soil about 
the city in which I live is as sacred as a battle-ground 



THE NEW SOUTH 271 

of the republic. Every hill that invests it is hallowed 
to you by the blood of your brothers who died for 
your victory, and doubly hallowed to us by the blood 
of those who died hopeless, but undaunted in defeat: 
sacred soil to all of us ; rich with memories that make 
us purer and stronger and better; silent but staunch 
witnesses, in its red desolation, of thfc matchless valor 
of American hearts and the deathless glory of Amer- 
ican arms ; speaking an eloquent witness in its white 
peace and prosperity to the indissoluble union of Amer- 
ican States and the imperishable brotherhood of the 
American people. 

Now, what answer has New England to this mes- 
sage? Will she permit the prejudice of war to remain 
in the hearts of the conquerors when it has died in the 
hearts of the conquered? Will she transmit this 
prejudice to the next generation, that in their hearts — 
which never felt the generous ardor of conflict — it 
may perpetuate itself? Will she withhold, save in 
strained courtesy, the hand which straight from his 
soldier's heart Grant offered to Lee at Appomattox? 
Will she make the vision of a restored and happy peo- 
ple, which gathered above the couch of your dying 
captain — filling his heart with grace, touching his 
lips with praise, and glorifying his path to the grave 
— will she make this vision on which the last sigh of 
his expiring soul breathed a benediction, a cheat and 
delusion? If she does, the South, never abject in ask- 
ing for comradeship, must accept with dignity its re- 
fusal ; but if she does not refuse to accept in frank- 
ness and sincerity this message of good will and 
friendship, then will the prophecy of Webster, deliv- 



272 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

ered in this very Society forty years ago amid tre- 
mendous applause, become true, be verified in its full- 
est sense, when he said : "Standing hand to hand and 
clasping hands, we should remain united as we have 
been for sixty years, citizens of the same country, 
members of the same government, united, all united 
now and united forever." There have been difficulties, 
contentions, and controversies, but I tell you that in 
my judgment — 

"Those opposed eyes, 
Which, like the meteors of a troubled heaven, 
All of one nature, of one substance, bred, 
Did lately meet in the intestine shock 
And furious close of civil butchery, 
Shall now, in mutual well-beseeming ranks, 
March all one way." 



THE RISE AXD FALL OF THE MUSTACHE 
By Robert J. Burdette 

Robert J. Burdette. humorist, lecturer and preacher, 
was born in Greensborough, Pennsylvania, June 30, 1844. He 
was educated in Illinois and served in the Union armies from 
1862 to 1865. He became a journalist, and was assistant edi- 
tor of the Burlington, Iowa, Buckeye, for several years. He 
began to lecture in 1876. 

While connected with the Peoria Transcript he collected 
bits of humor to lighten the dull hours of his invalid wife, 
and it was under her encouragement that these bits of hu- 
mor grew into the lecture "The Rise and Fall of the Mus- 
tache", herewith printed. 

Years later he was called to the pastorate of the Baptist 
Temple in Los Angeles. Here he used his gift of humor 
to advantage, believing, with Beecher, "When you are iight- 
the Devil, shoot him with anything", and his keen humor was 
his greatest weapon. But it is as a lecturer that he is remem- 
bered throughout the length and breadth of the United 
States. His control over audiences was perfect and he 
could take them from humor to pathos and back again with 
r.:;.rvelous ease. As a lecture whose purpose was wholesome 
entertainment "The Rise and Fall of the Mustache" has no 
superior. He knew boyhood, and never lost his boyhood point 
of view. At the same time his mature experience enabled him 
to view human life in a kindly and sympathetic way. His 
humor was always kindly, and his personality made him a 
great favorite with popular audiences. 

He died at his home in Pasedena, California, November 
19, 1914. after an illness of two years. 

He used to say that there was not only as much fun in the 
world as there ever was but a great deal more, because "there 
are more people in it, and people are the funniest things on 
this side of the grave". 

The following reprint of the lecture is made with the 



274 THB DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

gracious permission of Mrs. Burdette, and of the Bobbs-Mer- 
rill Company, publishers, of Indianapolis, Indiana. It may be 
found, with several other writings of Mr. Burdette, in the 
book "Old Time and Young Tom", published by the Bobbs- 
Merrill Company. 

In making assignments the teacher should select from 
the forty-one assignments in this lecture such as best suit the 
class, leaving the others out. 

I. Once upon a time — last night, last week, a 
month ago, a year, five, ten years ago — something 
like that, I had a dream that I remember to this day, 
and that in itself is remarkable, for few dreams are 
made of stuff that endures. The dream you had last 
night you told this morning at the breakfast table very 
well, and everybody recognized it as a dream, because 
of its vivid unreality ; but when you told it at noon it 
began to frazzle out at the edges ; and when you told 
it this evening at the dinner table you made it up as 
you went along, every word of it, and everybody knew 
it, because it didn't sound anything like a dream. 

But I think that to every man and woman God sends 
one dream in a lifetime that lasts so long as life lasts — 
one Bethel vision of loneliness and loving sympathy. 
I dreamed I was a boy again. Not a great big, rol- 
licking, football boy, trying to learn the new rules to 
play them in the old way, but a wee tiny boy; so lit- 
tle I couldn't sleep alone. So I was sleeping back in 
the dear old place, with my head pillowed on my 
mother's shoulder, that "blessed hollow of the shoul- 
der" that Celia Thaxter said God made for some 
tired human head to rest in. I was so happy sleeping 
there that I woke up with an excess of comfort. I 



RISE AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 275 

reached out my hand for her with a child's caress, and 
she wasn't there. Then I reached over on the other 
side, and she wasn't there. Then I sat bolt upright in 
the bed. There I was, half awake, half a hundred 
years old, all alone, in the dark, and my mother was 
gone. So homesick I was for her, I wanted to cry. 
And then I laughed aloud to think how funny it 
would sound to hear an old man crying in the night, 
like a baby who wanted a drink. I put my head back 
on the pillow, and I wished — oh, how earnestly I 
wished ! — that I was back in the dear old place, where 
I had been safe, safe, safe as I had never been since 
I left it. For half a minute I foolishly wished I was 
a boy again. But when I arose in the morning, when 
I settled down to my work, and felt the highest and 
noblest joy that comes into the soul of man or wom- 
an — the delight of having work to do and the hap- 
piness of doing it — I was so glad I wasn't a boy, and 
gladder still that never again in this life or in any 
other would I be a boy. 

2. But sometimes a man says, "Oh, I don't know 
about that. I would like to be a boy again." "Why ?" 
"Oh," he says, "a boy has such an easy time — no 
trouble — no care — no responsibility." Yes, I know, 
children have no troubles — only they have. They 
have more troubles than grown-up people. I do sym- 
pathize with grown-up people in trouble, but not 
enough to hurt me or do them much good. If a man 
got into a thousand troubles I would break my heart 
over him. But he doesn't. He gets into the same 
trouble a thousand times. That is different. I get 
tired of it after I have pulled him out of the same old 



276 THB DBLIVBRY OF A SPEECH 

hole, by his long silken ears, on the Sabbath day, about 
five hundred times. If he was anything but a man, by 
that time he would have sense enough to go around 
the hole or stay on his own side of it. 

But a boy's troubles are all new, as he gets into one 
and another and another until he has gone the whole 
round of experimental experiences. He thought when 
he landed on this planet, it was a good, sweet, tender- 
hearted world, with a light caressing hand. Little by 
little he learns there is cruelty, injustice, meanness 
and treachery written on the calendar, even between 
the lines of love and truth. He can't understand this. 
It hurts him. He gets used to trouble by and by, as 
grown-up people do. Just as the soldier under the 
old system of military discipline would stand with his 
wrists leashed to the stake and his back bared for the 
punishment. 

The sergeant standing at his side, counted with 
cruel deliberation the descending blows of the lash. 
When he got as far as "twenty — twenty-one — twen- 
ty-two — " that didn't hurt so much. By that time the 
soldier had caught the rhythm of the lash. He knew 
the blow was coming; he braced his shoulders and 
waited for it. His pride nerved him. His purpose of 
revenge burned in his soul like a smouldering vol- 
cano. You might whip the life out of him after that, 
and you could not wring a moan from his set teeth. 
But when the first blow uncoiled itself like a hissing 
serpent on the surprised and quivering shoulders — 
that startled the scream from him. That hurt. It had 
the whole back to hit on, and it hit in an unexpected 
place. It is the new trouble that hurts. 



RISB AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 277 

3. Think, then, what must have been the experience 
of the first family in the human race, when all the 
troubles in the world were not only new, but had to 
be invented. Adam and Eve are the only people in 
history who started out in life under the terrible hand- 
icap of being born full-grown. They had scarcely 
got their farm — the only one on earth — reduced to 
a kind of weed-producing, weather-fighting, grange- 
like order of things, with nothing to disturb the quiet, 
happy, care-free, independent life of the jocund 
farmer, except maybe a little rust in the oats; blight 
in the wheat; army-worm in the corn; Colorado bee- 
tles foraging the potato patch ; cutworms laying waste 
the cucumbers ; curculio in the plums and borers per- 
forating the apple-trees; a new kind of insect they 
couldn't guess the name of desolating the pastures ; dry 
weather burning up the barley ; wet weather rotting the 
corn; too cold for the melons and too hot for the 
strawberries ; chickens dying with the pip ; hogs being 
gathered to their fathers with the cholera ; sheep fading 
away with a complication of things no man could re- 
member; horses getting along as well as could be ex- 
pected, with a little spavin, ring-bone, wolf-teeth, dis- 
temper, heaves, blind staggers, collar-chafes, saddle- 
galls, colic now and then, foundering occasionally, ep- 
izootic when there was nothing else ; cattle going wild 
with the horn ail ; moth in the beehives ; snakes in the 
milk-house ; moles in the kitchen garden — Adam had 
just about got through breaking wild land with a 
crooked stick, and settled down comfortably, when 
the sound of the Boy was heard in the land. 

Did it ever occur to you that Adam was probably 



278 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

the most troubled and worried man that ever lived? 
I have often pictured him as a careworn-looking 
man; a puzzled-looking farmer who would sigh fifty 
times a day, and run his irresolute fingers through his 
hair while he wondered what under the canopy he was 
going to do with those boys, and whatever was going 
to become of them. For you see they were the first 
and only boys on earth. There were no other parents 
in the neighborhood with whom Adam, in his mo- 
ments of perplexity, could consult. There wasn't a 
boy in the country with whom Adam's boys could play 
and fight. And Adam had never been a boy himself ; 
what could he know about boy nature or boy troubles 
and pleasures? 

4. Imagine, if you can, the celerity with which he 
kicked off the leaves, and paced up and down in the 
moonlight the first time little Cain made the welkin 
ring when he had the colic. How could Adam know 
what ailed him? He couldn't tell Eve that she had 
been sticking the baby full of pins. He didn't even 
know enough to turn the vociferous infant over on 
his face and jolt him into serenity. If the fence cor- 
ners on his farm had been overgrown with catnip, 
never an idea had Adam what to do with it. It is 
probable that after he got down on his knees and felt 
for thorns or snakes or rats in the bad, and thor- 
oughly examined young Cain for bites or scratches, 
he passed him over to Eve with the usual remark : 

''There, take your baby" (accent heavy on "your"), 
"and hush him up, for heaven's sake," and then went 
off and sat down under^. distant tree with his fingers 
in his ears, and perplexity in his brain, while young 



RISE AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 279 

Cain split the night with the most hideous howls the 
empty little world had ever listened to. It must have 
stirred the animals up to a degree unto which no' me- 
nagerie has ever since attained. No sleep in the vi- 
cinity of Eden that night for baby, beasts or Adam. 
It is more than probable that the weeds got a long 
start of Adam the next day, while he lay around in 
shady places and slept in troubled dozes, disturbed, 
perhaps, by awful visions of possible twins and more 
colic. 

And when the other boy came along, and the boys 
got old enough to sleep in a bed by themselves, they 
had no pillows to fight with. What comfort could 
two boys get out of pelting each other with frag- 
ments of moss or bundles of brush? What dismal 
views of future humanity Adam must have received 
from the glimpses of original sin which began to de- 
velop itself in his boys. How he must have wondered 
what put into their heads the thousand and one ques- 
tions with which they plied their parents day after 
day. I wonder what he thought when they first be- 
gan to string buckeyes on the cat's tail. And when 
night came there was no "hired girl" or black 
"mammy" to keep the boys quiet by telling them ghost 
stories. Adam didn't know so much as an anecdote. 

5. Cain's education depended on his inexperienced 
parents, who had never seen a boy until they met 
Cain. There wasn't an educational help in the mar- 
ket. There wasn't an alphabet block in the county. 
There were no other boys in the republic to teach 
young Cain to lie, and swear, and smoke, and drink, 
fight and steal, and thus develop the boy's dormant 



2 8o THE DBUVBRY OF A SPEECH 

statesmanship, and prepare him for the political du- 
ties of his maturer years. There wasn't a pocket- 
knife in the universe that he could borrow — and 
lose. When he wanted to cut his ringer, as all boys 
must do now and then, he had to cut it with a clam 
shell. There were no country relations upon whom 
little Cain could be inflicted for two or three weeks 
at a time, when his wearied parents wanted a little 
rest. There was nothing for him to play with. Adam 
couldn't show him how to make a kite. He had a 
much better idea of angels' wings than he had of a 
kite. If little Cain had even asked for such a simple 
bit of mechanism as a "shinny-club" — sometimes vul- 
garly called a "hockey-stick" — Adam would have 
gone out into the depths of the primeval forest and 
wept in helpless confessed ignorance. 

Small wonder that Cain turned out "bad". I al- 
ways thought he would. For his entire education de- 
pended on a most ignorant man, a man in the very 
palmiest days of his ignorance, who couldn't have 
known less if he had tried all his life on a high salary 
and had a man to help him. And the boy's education 
had to be conducted entirely upon the catechetical 
system; only, in this instance, the pupil asked the 
questions, and his parent teachers — heaven help 
them — had to answer at them. 

For they could not take refuge from the steady 
stream of questions that poured in upon them day 
after day, by interpolating a fairy story, as you do- 
when your boy asks you questions about something of 
which you never heard. For how could Adam begin, 
"Once upon a time", when with one incisive question 



RISE AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 281 

Cain could pin him right back against the dead wall 
of creation, and make him either specify what time, 
or acknowledge the fraud? How could Eve tell him 
about Jack and the Bean-Stalk, when Cain, fairly 
crazy for some one to play with, knew perfectly well 
there was not, and never had been, another boy on the 
plantation? And as day by day Cain brought home 
things in his hands about which to ask questions that 
no mortal could answer, how grateful his bewildered 
parents must have been that he had no pockets in 
which to transport his collections. For many genera- 
tions came into the fair young world, got into no end 
of trouble and died out of it, before a boy's pocket 
solved the problem how to make the things contained 
seven times greater than the container. 

6. The only thing that saved Adam and Eve from 
interrogational insanity was the paucity of the lan- 
guage. If little Cain had possessed the verbal abun- 
dance of the language in which men today are talked 
to death, his father's bald head would have gone down 
in shining flight to the ends of the earth to escape 
him, leaving Eve to look after the stock, save the 
crop, and raise her boy as best she could. 

Which would have been, six thousand years ago, as 
today, just like a man. 

Because it was no off-hand, absent-minded work 
answering questions about things in those spacious old 
days, when there was crowds of room, and every- 
thing grew by the acre. When a placid but exceed- 
ingly unanimous-looking animal went rolling by, pro- 
ducing the general effect of an eclipse, and Cain would 
shout : 



282 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

"Oh, lookee, lookee, pa! what's that?" 

Then the patient Adam, trying to saw enough 
kitchen wood with a piece of flint to last over Sun- 
day, would have to pause and gather up words enough 
to say : 

"That, my son? That is only a mastodon gigan- 
tens; he has a bad look, but a placid temper." 

And presently: 

"Oh, pa! pa! What's that over yon?" 

"Oh, bother," Adam would reply ; "it's only a paleo- 
therium, mammalia pachydermata." 

"Oh, yes; theliocomeafterus. Oh! lookee, lookee at 
this 'un !" 

"Where, Cainny? Oh, that in the mud? That's 
only an acephala lamelli branchiata. It won't bite you, 
but you mustn't eat it. It's poison as politics." 

"Whee! See there! see, see, see! What's him?" 

"Oh, that? Looks like a plesiosaurus ; keep out of 
his way; he has a jaw like — " And just in time 
Adam remembered that he had no mother-in-law. 

"Oh, yes; a plenosserus. And what's that fellow, 
poppy ?" 

"That's a silurus malapterurus. Don't you go near 
him; he has the disposition of a Georgia mule." 

"Oh, yes; a slapterus. And what's this little one?" 

"Oh, it's nothing but an aristolochioid. Where did 
you get it? There, now, quit throwing stones at that 
acanthopterygian ; do you want to get yourself kicked ? 
And keep away from the nothodenatrichomanoides. 
My stars, Eve ! where did he get that anonaceas-hydro- 
charideo-nymphseoid ? Do you never look after him 
at all? Here, you, Cain, get right away down from 



RISE AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 283 

there, and chase that megalosaurius out of the melon 
patch, or I'll set the monopleuro branchian on you." 

7. Just think of it, Christian man with a family to 
support, with last year's stock on your shelves, and 
a draft as long as a clothes-line to pay tomorrow ! 
Think of it, woman, with all a woman's love and con- 
stancy, and a mother's sympathetic nature, with three 
meals a day three hundred and sixty-five times a 
year to think of, and the flies to chase out of the sit- 
ting-room; think, if your cherub boy was the only 
boy in the wide, wide world, and all his questions 
which now radiate in a thousand directions among 
other boys, who help him to cut his eye-teeth, were 
focused upon you ! 

Well, you have no time to pity Adam. You have 
your own boy to look after. Or, your neighbor has 
a boy, whom you can look after much more closely 
than his mother does, and much more to your own 
satisfaction than to the boy's comfort. 

Your boy is, as Adam's boy was, an animal that 
asks questions. If there were any truth in the old 
theory of the transmigration of souls, when a boy 
died he would pass into an interrogation-point. And 
he'd stay there. He'd never get out of it ; for he never 
gets through asking questions. The older he grows 
the more he asks, and the more perplexing his ques- 
tions are, and the more unreasonable he is about want- 
ing them answered to suit himself. Why, the oldest 
boy I ever knew — he was fifty-seven years old, and 
I went to school to him — could and did ask the long- 
est, hardest, crookedest questions, that no fellow who 
used to trade off all his books for a pair of skates 



2 8 4 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

could answer. And when his questions were not an- 
swered to suit him, it was his custom — a custom more 
honored in the breeches than in the observance — to 
take up a long, slender, but exceedingly tenacious rod, 
which lay ever near the big dictionary, and smite with 
it the boy whose naturally-derived, Adamic ignorance 
was made manifest. 

Ah, me, if the boy could only do as he is done by, 
and ferule the man or the woman who fails to reply 
to his inquiries, as he is himself corrected for similar 
shortcomings, what a valley of tears, what a howling 
wilderness he could make of this world. 

8. Your boy, asking today pretty much the same 
questions, with heaven knows how many additional 
ones, that Adam's boy did, is told, every time that he 
asks one that you don't know anything about, just as 
Adam told Cain fifty times a day, that he will know 
all about it when he is a man. And so from the days 
of Cain down to the present generation of boys, the 
boy ever looks forward to the time when he will be 
a man and know everything. 

His questions multiply when he begins learning the 
English language, which he never does learn, because 
it changes faster than any boy can grow, and no mat- 
ter how he spells it some dictionary contradicts him. 
But always, to the boy, any language is merely a me- 
dium of communicating questions. He asks questions 
that no grown person would think of, and a score of 
"grown-ups" could not answer. We grow so weary 
of his interrogations at times that we say, "He asks 
such foolish questions." But no boy asks foolish ques- 
tions. He asks questions we cannot answer — that 



RISE AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 285 

is what makes us tired. There is an old proverb, "Any 
fool can ask questions, but it takes a wise man to an- 
swer them." But a fool cannot ask questions without 
at once exposing his folly and ignorance. One of the 
best and wisest school-teachers I ever suffered under 
used to mark the boys in class, not on their recita- 
tions, but on the questions they asked about the les- 
son. 

There is no way in which a man exposes his ignor- 
ance so completely and thoroughly as by "butting in- 
to" a conversation and asking questions about the 
subject under discussion. His first question may be- 
tray his ignorance. Go to the court-house some day — 
go there before you have to; you will enjoy the illus- 
tration better. Here is a man on the witness-stand 
who tells a story apparently as straight as a rule — a 
clean-cut statement of facts. His testimony is so 
strong that we say, "Well, that settles the question for 
the prosecution; there is no use calling another wit- 
ness." Then a lawyer on the other side takes the man 
in hand. Now, mind you, he does not contradict a 
word the man says : he simply asks him a few inno- 
cent-sounding questions, and the witness' beautiful 
story falls into a hundred fragments. Now, who was 
the fool, the man asking the questions, or the fellow 
in the witness-box, sweating himself to death trying to 
remember how he answered that same question the 
other time ? Why, it took that lawyer years of study 
of books, and years of the profoundest study of the 
deeper book of human nature, to learn to ask ques- 
tions. 

9. And the boy's questions have a philosophical 



286 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

meaning behind them. I remember going to a World's 
Fair, once upon a time, with a boy with whom I loved 
very dearly to travel — he showed me so many more 
things than I could have seen by myself. One day we 
ran up against a great big electric incubator, a ma- 
chine where they hatched chickens by lightning. I 
have eaten some I thought had been struck by lightning 
in order to kill them. But this machine hatched them 
out. I thought it was an excellent opportunity to give 
the boy a little instruction in practical biology. I said : 
"Is it not wonderful, my son, to see how the little 
chicken comes out of the egg?" He said: "No, I don't 
see anything remarkable about that. I see easy 
enough how he gets out. What puzzles me is how the 
little beggar got in !" 

Here is a man sitting down some evening, who 
wants to read about twenty pounds of evening paper 
before he goes to bed, and his little son is assisting 
him with irrelevant questions about various things. 
The wearied parent lowers the paper a little bit. "Bob- 
bie," he says, "I will let you have one more question 
tonight; then I don't want to hear the sound of your 
voice for six weeks." Bobbie has one right on the 
hair-trigger, ready to fire when he gets the word. 
"Pa," he says, "is it true, what this book says, that a 
camel can go forty days without water?" "Yes, he 
can. Now, shut up." By and by the boy pleads — 
"Just one more." His father says : "Well, if it is a 
foolish one, you go to bed." The boy says : "How 
long could he go if he had water?" And the next min- 
ute Bobbie is under the blankets. Not to get warm — 
oh, no; he gets warm on the way up. 



RISE AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 287 

So, by and by we send the boy to school, and then 
he realizes that they are increased that rise up against 
him. Because now other people ask the questions, and 
he has to answer them. He learns how to sympathize 
with his parents. He gets tangled in the ungrammat- 
ical mazes of the English grammar, which has not yet 
been invented, and he gets blocked by mathematics. 
"Do you not know — " the dear patient teacher was 
looking at a cluster of errors on the blackboard — 
"do you not know that always and under all circum- 
stances two and two make four?" The boy said: "No, 
sir; I do not." "What else can it possibly make?" 
And the boy said : "It depends. If you put one two 
in front of the other, it makes twenty-two every 
time." 

10. And yet, all the time the boy is asking ques- 
tions he is answering them, until we stand amazed at 
the breadth and depth of his knowledge. He asks 
questions and gets answers of teachers that we and the 
school board know not of. Day by day, great un- 
printed books, upon the broad pages of which the 
hand of nature has traced characters that only a boy 
can read, are spread out before him. He knows now 
where the first snow-drop lifts its tiny head, a pearl 
on the bosom of the barren earth, in the spring ; he 
knows where the last Indian pink lingers, a flame in 
the brown and rustling woods, in the autumn days. 
His pockets are cabinets, from which he drags curi- 
ous fossils, hideous beetles and bugs and things that 
you never saw before, and for which he has appro- 
priate names of his own. He knows where there are 
three orioles' nests, and so far back as you can re- 



288 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

member you never saw an oriole's nest in your life. 
He can tell you how to distinguish the good mush- 
rooms from the poisonous ones, and poison grapes 
from good ones, and how he ever found out, except 
by eating both kinds, is a mystery to his mother. 
Every root, bud, leaf, berry or bark that will make 
any bitter tea, reputed to have marvelous medicinal 
virtues, he knows where to find, and in the season he 
does find, and brings home, and all but sends the en- 
tire family to the cemetery by making practical tests 
of his remedies. 

As his knowledge broadens, his human superstition 
develops itself. He has a formula, repeating which 
nine times a day, while pointing his ringer fixedly to- 
ward the sun, will cause warts to disappear from the 
hand. If the eight-day clock at home tells him it is 
two o'clock, and the flying leaves of the dandelion de- 
clare it is half past five, he will stand or fall with the 
dandelion. 

He has a charm by which anything that has been 
lost may be found. He has a natural instinct for the 
woods, and can on more be lost in them than a squir- 
rel. If the cow does not come home — and if she is 
a town cow, like a town man, she does not come 
home, three nights in the week — you lose half a day 
of valuable time looking for her. Then you pay a 
man three dollars to look for her two days longer, or 
as long as the appropriation holds out. Finally, a 
quarter sends a boy to the woods ; he comes back at 
milking-time, whistling the tune that no man ever 
imitated, and the cow ambles contentedly along be- 
fore him. 



RISE AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 289 

11. He has one particular marble which he regards 
with about the same superstitious reverence that a 
pagan does his idol. Carnelian, crystal, bull's-eye, 
china, pottery, boly, blood alley, or commie, whatever 
he may call it, there is "luck in it". When he loses 
this marble, he sees panic and bankruptcy ahead of 
him, and retires from business prudently, before the 
crash comes, failing, in true commercial style, with 
both pockets full of winnings, and a creditors' meet- 
ing in the back room. 

A boy's world is open to no one but a boy. You 
never really revisit the glimpses of your boyhood, 
much as you may dream of it. After you get into a 
tail-coat and tight boots, you never again set foot in 
boy world. You lose this instinct for the woods; you 
cant' tell a pig-nut tree from a pecan ; you can't make 
friends with strange dogs; you can't make the terrific 
noises with your mouth; you can't invent the inimi- 
table signals or the characteristic catchwords of boy- 
hood. 

He is getting on, is your boy. He reaches the dime- 
novel age. He wants to be a missionary, or a pirate. 
As far as he expresses any preference, he would 
rather be a pirate, an occupation in which there are 
more chances for making money, and fewer opportu- 
nities for being devoured. He develops a yearning 
love for school and study about this time, and every 
time he dreams of being a pirate he dreams of hang- 
ing his dear teacher at the yard-arm in the presence 
of the delighted scholars. His voice develops, even 
more rapidly and thoroughly than his morals. In the 
yard, on the housetop, down the street, around the 



290 THE DELIVERY OP A SPEECH 

corner; wherever there is a patch of ice big enough 
for him to break his neck on, or a pond of water deep 
enough to drown in, the voice of your boy is heard. 
He whispers in a shout, and converses, in confidential 
moments, in a shriek. He exchanges bits of back- 
fence gossip about his father's domestic matters with 
the boy living in the adjacent township, to which in- 
teresting revelations of home life the intermediate 
neighborhood listens with intense satisfaction, and the 
two home circles in helpless dismay. 

12. He has an unconquerable hatred for company, 
and an aversion for walking down-stairs. For a year 
or two his feet never touch the stairway in his descent, 
and his habit of polishing the stair rail by using it as 
a passenger tramway soon breaks the other members 
of the family of the careless habit of setting a lamp 
or water-pitcher on the newel post. He wears the 
same size boot as his father ; and on the driest dusti- 
est days in the year, always manages to convey some 
mud on the carpets. He carefully steps over the door- 
mat, and until he is about seventeen years old he act- 
ually never knew there was a scraper at the front 
porch. 

About this time, bold but inartistic pencil sketches 
break out mysteriously on the alluring background of 
the wall-paper. He asks, with great regularity, alarm- 
ing frequency, and growing diffidence, for a new hat. 
You might as well buy him a new disposition. He 
wears his hat in the air and on the ground far more 
than he does on his head, and he never hangs it up 
that he doesn't pull the hook through the crown, un- 
less the hook breaks off or the hat-rack pulls over. 



RISB AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 291 

He is a perfect Robinson Crusoe in inventive ge- 
nius. He can make a kite that will fly higher and pull 
harder than a balloon. He can take out a couple of 
the pantry shelves and make a sled that is amazement 
itself. The mouse-trap he builds out of the water- 
pitcher and the family album is a marvel of mechani- 
cal ingenuity. So is the excuse he gives for such a 
selection of raw material. When, suddenly, some Mon- 
day morning, the clothes-line, without any just or ap- 
parent cause or provocation, shrinks sixteen feet, 
philosophy cannot make you believe that the weather 
man did it with his little barometer. Because, far 
down the dusty street, you can see Tom in the dim 
distance, driving a prancing team, six-in-hand, with 
the missing link. 

13. You send your boy on an errand. There are 
three ladies in the parlor. You have waited as long as 
you can, in all courtesy, for them to go. They have 
developed alarming symptoms of staying to tea. And 
you know there aren't half enough strawberries to go 
around. It is only a three-minutes' walk to the gro- 
cery, however, and Tom sets off like a rocket, and you 
are so pleased with his celerity and ready good nature 
that you want to run after him and kiss him. He 
is gone a long time, however. Ten minutes become 
fifteen, fifteen grow into twenty, the twenty swell into 
the half hour, and your guests exchange very signifi- 
cant glances as the half becomes three-quarters. Your 
boy returns at last, — apprehension in his downcast 
eyes, humility in his laggard step, penitence in the ap- 
pealing slouch of his battered hat, and a pound and a 
half of shingle nails in his hands. 



292 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

"Mother," he says "what else was it you told me 
to get besides the nails ?" And while you are counting 
your scanty store of berries to make them go round 
without a fraction, you hear Tom out in the back 
yard whistling and hammering away, building a dog- 
house with the nails you never told him to get. 

Poor Tom, he loves at this age quite as ardently 
as he makes mistakes and mischief. And he is re- 
pulsed quite as ardently as he makes love. If he hugs 
his sister, he musses her ruffle, and gets cuffed for it. 
Two hours later another boy, not more than twenty- 
two or twenty-three years older than Tom, some 
neighbor's Tom, will come in, and will just make the 
most hopeless, terrible, chaotic wreck of that ruffle that 
lace can be distorted into. And the only reproof he 
gets is the reproachful murmur, "Must go so soon?" 
when he doesn't make a move to go until he hears 
the alarm clock up-stairs and the old gentleman in the 
adjoining room banging around building the morning 
fires, and loudly wondering if young Mr. Bostwick 
is going to stay to breakfast. 

Tom is at this age set in deadly enmity against 
"company", which he soon learns to regard as his 
mortal foe. He regards "company" as a mysterious 
and eminently respectable delegation that always stays 
to dinner, invariably crowds him to the second table, 
never leaves him any of the pie, and usually makes 
him late for school. Naturally, he learns to love re- 
fined society, but in a conservative non-committal sort 
of way, dissembling his love so effectually that even 
his parents never dream of its existence until it is 
gone. 



MSB AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 293 

14. Tom's life is not all comedy in the happy days 
of boyhood. Sometimes, after a troubled day at 
school, where he has had conflicts with teachers and 
books, and other boys, he comes home in the eventide 
with joyous anticipations — home, a sure refuge for 
him ; home, where love, with many caresses, will make 
up for all his troubles. He isn't in the house ten min- 
utes before somebody "tells on him". It doesn't make 
much difference what you tell on a boy; most any- 
thing hits him somewhere. He can't dodge every- 
thing when it rains "informations". The boy comes 
galloping home, empty as a drum, hungrier than a 
shark, and with an appetite like an ostrich. He hears 
his father's voice, gentle, patient, firm, calling, "Thom- 
as!" Well, that gives the boy cold feet. When his 
father says "Tom", he knows the barometer is "set 
fair". When he says "Thomas", the boy is at once 
aware that the investigating committee is in session, 
with power to send for persons, and to act. 

Tom goes before him wondering and apprehensive. 
"My son, what is that I hear about you today?" Well, 
Tom is no prophet. How can he tell what anybody 
has heard about him that day ? It is all he can do to 
keep track of the thrilling incidents of his career. But, 
like most boys under the circumstances, Tom is a 
might good guesser. He can always guess what his 
father has been very likely to hear about if he isn't 
deaf and blind. When he guesses what it is, being a 
good honest boy, he owns up. When the average boy 
sees trouble coming down a narrow lane to meet him, 
and he can't run around either end, or get through 
the center, or crawl under, or climb over, he owns up. 



294 THB DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

He makes a full and frank confession, to save the 
trouble and expense of a trial before a prejudiced 
court. Not being an infallible guesser, however, two 
or three times he "owns up" to the wrong thing — 
something his father hasn't heard a word about. Then 
he is in for two of them — one for the case the court 
had information about, and one for the one con- 
fessed. After one or two breaks of that kind the boy 
learns the wisdom of the serpent, and when next his 
father asks him what it is he has heard about him 
that day, Tom says, "If it please the court, I would 
rather hear the indictment read before I plead." It 
takes a little longer but it's safer for the defendant. 

15. Sometimes when the tragedies of the day have 
been unusually painful; when, after the closing act 
wherein the boy's foes have been they of his own 
household, Tom, feeling that nobody in all the world 
loves him or cares for him; believing honestly that he 
is in everybody's way, has crawled off to his own 
room, and cried himself to sleep. For no one can feel 
a deeper pity for, or a tenderer sympathy with any one 
else, than a boy can entertain for himself, when he 
gives himself up to the luxury of personal woe. By 
and by, you, being the boy's mother, rise and gently 
steal away after him, sometimes, it may be, pausing 
at the sitting-room door to explain * — as though the 
sweetest thing the mother ever does requires explana- 
tion or apology — that you are just going up to Tom's 
room to see that he is "tucked in nicely for the night." 
Tuck a boy in for the night ! You can wrap and roll 
him up in quilt and blanket until he looks like a cocoon 
or a mummy, and then, the first time he turns over, 



RISE AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 295 

there won't be a rag on the bed. You might as well 
try to tuck in a hound pup as a boy. He sleeps as 
actively as he plays ball. 

He has earned his sleep. The curtain has fallen 
on one day's act in the drama of a boy's life. The 
restless feet that all day long have pattered and wan- 
dered so far — down dusty roads, over hot pave- 
ments, through long stretches of quiet wooded lanes, 
along the winding cattle paths in the deep silent 
woods; that have dabbled in the cool brook where it 
babbles and dimples over the shining pebbles, that have 
filled your house with noise and dust and racket, are 
still. The stained hand outside the sheet is soiled 
and rough, and the cut finger, with the rude bandage 
of the boy's own surgery, pleads with a mute effec- 
tive pathos of its own for the mischievous hand that 
is never idle. 

On the brown cheek the trace of a tear marks the 
piteous close of the day's troubles, the closing scene 
in a troubled little drama; trouble at school with 
books that were too many for him ; trouble with temp- 
tations to have unlawful fun that were too strong for 
him, as they are frequently too strong for his father; 
trouble in the street with boys that were to big for 
him; at last, in his home, in his castle, his refuge, 
trouble has pursued him, until, feeling utterly friend- 
less and in everybody's way, he crawled off to the dis- 
mantled den, dignified by the title of "the boy's room". 
His overcharged heart has welled up into his eyes, his 
waking breath has broken into a sob, and just as he 
begins to think that, after all, life is only one broad 
sea of troubles, whose restless billows, in never-end- 



296 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

ing succession, break and beat and double upon the 
short shore-line of a boy's life, he has drifted away 
into the wonderland of a boy's sleep, where fairy fin- 
gers picture his dreams. 

16. How soundly, deeply, peacefully he sleeps! No 
mother, who has never dragged a sleepy boy off the 
lounge at nine o'clock, and hauled him off up-stairs to 
bed, can know with what a herculean grip a square 
sleep takes hold of a boy's senses, nor how fearfully 
and wonderfully limp and nerveless it makes him ; nor 
how, in direct antagonism to all established laws of 
anatomy, it develops joints that work both ways, all 
the way up and down, before and behind that boy. 

And what pen can portray the wonderful enchant- 
ments of a boy's dreamland! No marvelous visions 
wrought by the weird power of hashish, no dreams 
that come to the sleep of jaded woman or tired man, 
no ghastly specters that dance attendance upon cold 
mince pie, but shrink into stale and trifling common- 
places compared with the marvelous, the grotesque, 
the wonderful, the terrible, the beautiful and the en- 
chanting scenes and people of a boy's dreamland. This 
may be owing, in a great measure, to the fact that the 
boy never relates his dream until all the members of 
the family have related theirs and then he comes in, 
like a back county, with the necessary majority. 

We love to go to the rooms where the "little peo- 
ple" sleep. We go there because, when the day is 
gone, when the twilight fades into night and the stars 
come out, when all the world is hushed and all the 
house is still, we remember, in that quiet moment, how 
cross we have been with the child, how unjust we 



RISE AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 297 

have been; how many times the little ones have wor- 
ried and fretted us. We may remember, too, how 
once, not because of anything worthy of sudden pun- 
ishment the boy has done, but because some one else, 
too big for us to punish, even with an expression of 
resentment, had irritated the over-tense nerves, we 
struck the boy out of our way. And in this quiet of 
the night and the watching stars, we remember how 
we ourselves, wayward and perverse children that we 
are, have tempted and defied infinite love and meas- 
ureless patience all along the way of that day's pil- 
grimage. 

17. And somehow the bed where the little ones 
sleep transforms itself into a homely kind of altar. We 
love to kneel down beside their innocence and lift up 
our hearts to the great All-father and ask for the 
blessing of sleep. Not for the children — oh, no ; they 
sleep well enough. The flossy heads just touch the 
pillow, and the little hearts go drifting out into the 
beautiful wonderland of childhood's dreams. They 
sleep well enough. We pray that the blessing of sleep 
may come down like the touch of God's caressing 
hand upon our own restless brains, our own troubled 
hearts, our own accusing consciences. We need to 
be hushed and lulled and soothed to sleep by the blessed 
promises upon which we pillow our sobbing hearts. 
The little children sleep well enough, for they are 
folded in the trustfulness of innocence. It is the 
"grown-up children", the children of many years, who 
have to be hushed to sleep every night by the love that 
is wider than all the seas and higher than the farthest 
star. 



298 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

The boy's room! The room itself is a comically- 
pathetic appeal to the heart of mother or father. The 
boy's room — well, it is better than it used to be, I 
am glad to say, but it is not perfection yet. The mother 
protests. "It is a very nice room for a boy, and be- 
sides," she says, "the boy never goes into the room 
till after dark." That's right. The boy doesn't want 
to go into that room while he can see anything in it. 
If he did, he'd have a nightmare. 

The mother says: "Well, it is small, but then we 
furnish it for him very nicely." Yes, we do; not. 
Furnish the boy's room nicely ! We furnish it se- 
curely. We are not going to have his life risked by 
any untoward accident because of weak untried fur- 
niture. We give him furniture that has been carefully 
tested. It has been graduated from every room in the 
house, and has taken a postgraduate course in the 
kitchen. "Well," the mother says, "that is all right, 
because the boy kicks to pieces everything you put in 
there, anyhow." So he does. He thinks that is what 
his furniture is for, to kick to pieces. He sees every- 
body else "has had a kick at it so he goes in for a 
scrappy game with it, and makes his touch-down in the 
first half. There is no second half to his furniture. 
"Oh, well," some one says, "you don't understand 
boys. They don't care for nice things. Almost any- 
thing will do for a boy." Don't fool yourself, good 
mother. A boy does love nice things and pretty 
things. A boy has better taste, is more artistic, he has 
more correct ideas of the beautiful, the fair and the 
good than his sister. He proves this when he is mar- 



RISE AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 299 

ried. Just look at the thing his sister marries ! Don't 
you talk to me about that girl's superior taste ! 

18. I was in Cleveland, once upon a time, attending a 
meeting of the Boys' Y. M. C. A., for boys under 
eighteen down to little fellows of twelve. Well, one 
Christmas-time the ladies of the "West Side" gave the 
boys a loan exhibition of calendars. They had every 
room tapestried with calendars. Beautiful calendars, 
romantic calendars, sentimental calendars, warlike 
calendars, comic calendars, religious and commercial 
calendars . — every sort of calendar. The last day of 
the exhibition they took a secret vote of the boys to 
select the picture they loved best. Of course every- 
body guessed what the boys would take — a bear hunt 
or a boat race, a sea-fight, something funny or he- 
roic — something that we would say "appealed to 
boys". 

With, I think, less than a dozen dissenting votes, 
the boys selected Raphael's Madonna, the last picture 
anybody guessed would be selected by boys at their 
very rough, rollicking, coltish age. But the helpless- 
ness and innocence and the sweetness of the little one 
in her arms; the look of universal mother-love in the 
Madonna face, caught the hearts of those boys, and 
that was their picture. They never would have done 
that if they had voted by holding up their hands. A 
boy is more sensitive in some heart matters than a 
girl, and he could never let you see down into the sen- 
timental part of his heart — never; an open vote 
would have selected an Indian fight, a tiger hunt or 
the battle of Manila Bay. 

What was the second choice ? There is a picture — 



3 oo THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

you have seen it repeated in lithograph a great many 
times — called The Physician. The scene is a pov- 
erty-stricken garret room; rough rafters showing; a 
rude little pallet made by turning two chairs together. 
On the bed lies a little girl. The physician, a man of 
about fifty, with grizzled beard, has turned the cheap 
paper shade on the lamp so as to focus all the light on 
the white little face. The parted lips tell of the fever 
that is devouring her. The little hand lies loosely over 
the side of the chair, just as the physician's fingers 
have let go of the wrist. 

Standing in the shadow at the foot of the bed are 
a working-man and a woman. He is holding her in 
his arms, her head buried on his shoulder. You can 
hear the sobs that are shaking her figure. The man 
clasps her in his embrace, tenderly, lovingly, with all 
the comfort his heart and arms can give. So poor 
they are, they have nothing in this world but what 
they can carry into the other world — love. The man's 
eyes are turned in an agonizing question upon the 
face of the physician, whose look is bent upon the tiny 
charity patient, grave, earnest, anxious, as though he 
sat at the bedside of a queen. This scene of poverty, 
and sorrow, and love, and loyal devotion — this picture 
was the second choice of these boys. And all the 
funny and fighting pictures received only a few scat- 
tering votes. There is a little bit of womanish ten- 
derness and sentiment in the heart of every boy. You 
see, his mother is a woman, and he has just a touch 
of her nature. 

19. Give him a whole room for his very own. It 
isn't only the boy who suffers. The man, when he be- 



RISE AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 301 

gins to prosper, builds a new house. His wife designs 
it, and gets two or three closets in every room. She 
says to the man, "Here, you have always complained 
that you never had any place to put your things about 
the house. Now, here is the biggest clothes closet in 
this house, eight feet wide, ten feet deep, twelve feet 
high, three rows of hooks on two sides, two rows of 
shelving, and a locker at the farther end. This is all 
for the man — there is nothing to go in there but the 
man's things !" Oh, how proud and rich you feel ! 
That is Monday morning. By Saturday night you are 
lucky if you have one hook. If you complain about 
it, your wife says she "has to have some place for her 
things." 

Let your boy help to furnish and decorate his 
own room. While he must have in it a great many 
things that we like, let him have a few things that he 
likes. It's his room. The treasures he brings home 
from field and wood and stream are more precious to 
him than the things that money can buy. But often, 
when we find these treasures in the boy's room, we 
throw them out of the window and tell him we don't 
want him to drag all the "trash" in the county into 
that room. Then we pile a lot of our own "trash" into 
it, because we have nowhere else to bestow it. 

When you buy pictures for the boy, don't put him 
off with advertisement pictures that you try to put 
into an old looking-glass frame which never did fit 
anything. Buy him new pictures, especially appro- 
priate to a boy's room. Have them framed down at 
the shop, as you do the pictures for the drawing-room 
and the hall. And let the boy go down and select one 



3 02 THE DBLIVBRY OF A SPEECH 

or two pictures all by himself. Don't you go with 
him. I know what you would do. You would say, 
"Now, dear, I don't want to influence you, but you 
must not buy this picture." "Well," the mother or the 
father says, "he is a boy ; he is rough ; he will buy 
something awful." Perhaps he may. Let him buy it. 
If the boy likes "rough" things, train him out of the 
liking for them gradually and sweetly, by giving him 
better things. 

20. And I'm not so certain that what we call 
"rough" things are not a rather important part of a 
boy's education. I believe it's a good thing to have one 
or two good hard-fighting pictures in a boy's room. 
They will inspire him to give and take hard knocks. 
He must be a fighter himself if he amounts to any- 
thing in the world. He must learn courage. And he 
must learn that it will require the noblest, highest, 
most-enduring type of courage in all this world to 
enable him to fight against and to conquer the mean- 
est, strongest, most treacherous, most persistent and 
relentless enemy he will ever encounter in this life — 
that is himself. The "fighting picture" need not make 
a slugger of the boy. It will probably save him from 
such a fate. The modern pugilist is not a fighter. He 
is a talker. All wars have been terrible. All wars have 
not been wicked. Napoleon Bonaparte was one sold- 
ier. George Washington was another. 

Instead of the "fighting picture", we sometimes put 
into his room a work of art by "ma", a little thing she 
did herself, when she went to school. It is a picture 
of a flower, done in pastel, faded and blended with 
the touch of the years. The flower grows on a 



RISE AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 303 

lightning-rod. A leaf on this side — a leaf on that 
side — leaf, leaf — leaf, leaf — and right on the tip- 
top of the rod, the flower. You couldn't break a petal 
off that chrysanthemum with a mallet and a cold- 
chisel. You can't hang it in the drawing-room, because 
people will ask what it is. And you are afraid to 
hang it in your own bed-room. You might wake up in 
the night and see it. So you put it in the boy's room. 
You tell him it's "pretty". 

Get nice furnishings for the boy's room. When 
you get him a dressing-table, get him something hand- 
some, with at least two legs of the same length. The 
boy would be satisfied with that, but usually the boy's 
table hasn't even one leg of the same length. Have an 
embroidered cover for it, such as his sister makes for 
some other fellow's table. His mother says, "That 
wouldn't do at all, because every time the boy washes 
his face you have to change the table cover." I know 
that. Every time the boy washes his face everything 
on that side of the room is soaking, sopping, drip- 
ping wet. With one exception — that's his face. That 
comes through dry-shod. ,He can use more water and 
wash less face than anything else on earth, except a 
cat. 

21. When you get him a looking-glass, get him a 
fine mirror, plate-glass, with beveled edge, and an ar- 
tistic frame. You ask the man for something real 
nice in the way of mirrors, and he shows you some- 
thing like that. "This," he says, "will be ten dollars 
and a half, to you." "Oh," you say, "this is for a 
boy's room." "Oh," the man says. Now, that is all 
you say, and that is all the man says — you just say 



3°4 



THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 



"Oh". There is no word in the English language that 
is capable of more variety of expression than the mon- 
osyllable "Oh". 

The man knows just what you want. They carry 
them in special lines in the furniture stores, called 
"boy's mirrors". They come two hundred in a 
crate, a dollar and a half a crate. The frame looks as 
though it had some cutaneous disorder. The glass is 
blistered and corrugated and wrinkled like an old 
wash-board. The boy looks into it and is horrified. 
He discovers therein a half dozen sectional boys, 
with only one eye for the six of them. He comes 
down-stairs, and we say to him, "Go right back to your 
room and brush your hair. How dare you come down 
to breakfast with your hair standing around like a 
quarter-back's?" "Well," he says, "I did brush all the 
heads I could see !" 

That is the room some boys grow up in. People 
wonder sometimes the boy has so little native refine- 
ment. The only wonder is that he has any. 

The boy is growing. He enters the hobbledehoy 
stage of life. For a little season, during this period 
of transition, he does not belong to the human race. 
For he isn't a boy any longer ; he isn't a man ; he cer- 
tainly isn't a woman or a girl. He is listed with the 
unclassified fauna of this planet. He is a little too 
tall for knickerbockers, and not quite old enough for 
long trousers. He is as awkward as he can be, be- 
fore death. Whatever he picks up he drops and 
breaks. Whatever is too heavy for him to lift he 
steps on and breaks. And whatever is too big for 
him to step on he runs into and breaks. 



RISE AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 305 

22. And his voice is changing. You hear him in an 
adjoining room, singing, all by himself, a sad sweet 
song. And you anxiously call out, "What are you 
boys quarreling about, in there?" Sounds like half a 
dozen of him in a scrap. This is a boy's exclusive 
experience. Women know nothing about it. The 
boy's sister never passes through these bitter waters. 
From babyhood to womanhood she is gracious, and 
graceful, and dear. Even when she is a laughing 
happy girl of twelve, with no more shape than a bol- 
ster, we say she is as sweet as she ever will be. No, 
indeed. She will grow lovelier and sweeter, more 
lovable and more — er — huggable, so to speak, for 
many years after that. 

And: His mother never cuts his hair again. Never. 
When Tom assumes the manly gown, she has looked 
her last upon his head, with trimming ideas. His 
hair will be trimmed and clipped, barberously it may 
be, but she will not be acscissory before the fact. She 
may sometimes long to have her boy kneel down be- 
fore her, while she gnaws around his terrified locks 
with a pair of scissors that were sharpened when they 
were made; and have since then cut acres of calico, 
and miles of paper, and great stretches of cloth, and 
snarls and coils of string, and furlongs of lamp-wick; 
and have snuffed candles ; and dug refractory corks out 
of the family "ink-bottle" ; and punched holes in skate 
straps ; and trimmed the family nails ; and have done 
their level best, at the annual struggle, to cut stove- 
pipe lengths in two ; and have successfully opened 
oyster and fruit cans; and pried up carpet tacks; and 
have many a time gone snarling around Tom's head, 



3 o6 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

and made him an object of terror to the children in 
the street, looking so much like a yearling colt that 
people have been afraid to approach him too suddenly, 
lest he should jump through his collar and run away. 
He feels, too, the consciousness of another grand 
truth in the human economy. It dawns upon his in- 
telligence that man's upper lip was designed by nature 
for a mustache pasture. How tenderly reserved he is 
when he is brooding over this discovery ! With what 
exquisite caution are his primal investigations con- 
ducted. In his microscopical researches it appears to 
him that the down on his upper lip is certainly more 
determined down, more positive, more pronounced, 
more individual fuzz than that which vegetates in 
neglected tenderness upon his cheeks. He makes cau- 
tious explorations along the land of promise with the 
tip of his tenderest finger, delicately backing up the 
grade the wrong way, going always against the grain, 
that he may the more readily detect the slightest symp- 
tom of an uprising by the first feeling of velvety re- 
sistance. 

23. And day by day he is more and more firmly con- 
vinced that there is in his lip the protoplasm of a glory 
that will, in its full development, eclipse even the maj- 
esty of his first tail-coat. And in the first dawning 
consciousness that the mustache is there, like the vote, 
and only needs to be brought out, how often Tom 
walks down to the barber shop, gazes longingly in at 
the window, and walks past. And how often, when 
he musters up sufficient courage to go in, and climbs 
into the chair, and is just on the point of huskily whis- 
pering to the barber that he would like a shave, the 



RISE AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 307 

entrance of a man with a beard like Frederick Bar- 
barossa's frightens away his resolution, and he has his 
hair cut again — the third time that week, and his 
hair is so short the barber has to part it with a 
straight-edge, and a scratch-awl. After that, he de- 
termines to shave himself, and surreptitiously obtains 
possession of the ancestral shaving machinery. His 
first shave is followed by a paternal investigation to 
discover "Who has been sharpening lead-pencils or 
opening sardine cans with my razor?" Nobody ever 
knows. 

All that we know about it is, that Tom holds the 
razor in his hand about a minute, wondering what to 
do with it, before the blade falls across his fingers and 
cuts every one of them. First blood claimed and al- 
lowed, for the razor. Then he straps the razor furi- 
ously. Or, rather, he razors the strap. He slashes 
that passive instrument in as many directions as he 
can make motions with the razor. He would cut it 
oftener if the strap lasted longer. Then he nicks the 
razor against the side of the mug. Then he drops it 
on the floor and steps on it and nicks it again. They 
are small nicks, not so large by half as a saw-tooth, and 
he flatters himself his father will never see them. 
Next he soaks the razor in hot water, as he has seen 
his father do. Then he takes it out, at a temperature 
anywhere under nine hundred eighty degrees Fahren- 
heit, and lays it against his cheek, and raises a blister 
there the size of the razor, as he never saw his father 
do, but as his father most assuredly did, many, many 
years before Tom met him. Then he makes a va- 
riety of indescribable grimaces and labial contortions 



3 o8 THE DBUVBRY OF A SPBBCH 

in a frenzied effort to get his upper lip into approach- 
able shape, and, at last, the first offer he makes at his 
embryo mustache, he slashes his nose with a vicious 
uppercut. He gashes the corners of his mouth ; wher- 
ever those nicks touch his cheek they leave a scratch 
apiece, and he learns what a good nick in a razor is 
for. When at last he lays the blood-stained weapon 
down, his gory lip looks as though it has just come 
out of a stubborn contest with a straw-cutter. 

But he learns to shave, after a while — just before 
he cuts his lip clear off. 

24. Tom is a big boy now. He is introduced, by 
young people of his own age, as "Mister". He scoffs 
at it, and likes it, not foreseeing the distant years when 
he will be heart-hungry for his old school nickname. 
He receives an invitation to a "party". He goes. He 
goes early. He runs nearly all the way for fear he 
may be "late to the party". Family isn't dressed when 
he gets there. 

When he is ushered into the drawing-room there is 
nobody there but chairs; all the chairs in the house, 
it seems to him. He is alone, and he can pick out 
the best and most comfortable one there, and sit in it 
all the evening. Instead of which, he picks out the 
meanest chair that was ever designed, an odd hall 
chair that got in by mistake ; one of these things with 
a haircloth cushion that a fly couldn't cling to, and a 
back that is so straight it leans forward a little bit, 
and a big carved ornament in the middle of it that 
catches you right in the shoulder-blades. Then he 
braces his feet against the carpet and by some miracle 
manages to stay in that chair. After he gets in it 



R1SB AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 309 

money couldn't hire him to move. By and by the 
guests begin to arrive. He wants people to under- 
stand he is accustomed to these little social functions, 
and knows what to do with himself. 

In order to look easy and unconscious, he piles one 
hand on top of the other. It doesn't fit, so he piles the 
other one on top. That fits worse than it did before, 
so he keeps trying on his hands, one after another. He 
wonders why hands didn't come in pairs instead of 
triplets. He could get along all right if it wasn't for 
the third hand. In course of time some lady comes 
along, as the crowd gets denser, and offers him a nice 
plate. He says, "No, thanks ; no plate." She doesn't 
pay any attention to what he says. She puts the plate 
on his lap. He says to himself, "All right. If it stays 
on, all right; if it slips off on the floor, all right." He 
didn't ask for the old thing, and he isn't going to feel 
responsible for broken china in that house. Another 
lady comes along with a napkin and a tea-cup and 
saucer. Others bring rations of cake and pile them 
on the boy's plate. 

You know the kind of place it is. You have suf- 
fered at it. One of those places where they pass re- 
freshments around the room. Oh, woman ! That is 
no kind of a way to feed a grown man. Nature never 
designed man for that kind of a picnicking animal, 
anyhow. If she had, she would have built him that 
way. She would have made his knees broad and 
flat, like a beaver's tail. Then you would have a lap 
you could hold something on besides a ninety-pound 
girl. And even she won't stay on unless she is held. 
So I have been told. They give you a tiny plate, with 



3 io THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

cake and wafers on it, and a toy cup and saucer, and 
two lumps of sugar, and a doll's spoon, which you 
know will fall off by and by — and it does. There you 
stand — no place to sit down, and you are tired after 
your long day's work. 

25. You can't let go of your tea-cup to eat your 
cake, and you can't let go of the cake to drink your 
tea. So you hold them there for fifteen minutes ; then 
some kind-hearted woman says, "Sha'n't I relieve 
you?" and takes them away from you. And you won- 
der why they gave them to you. You can't hear a 
word that is said. Every time anybody comes along 
and asks, "Are you enjoying the evening?" — you say, 
in a dying tone, you are having a "very nice time." 
You don't remember when you had such a good time, 
except in the dentist's chair. And you look it. 

Now, the boy hasn't enough nerve to decline any- 
thing, so they pile the cake high on his plate. All 
kinds of cake: loaf cake; soft squashy cake; layer 
cake. Layer cake ! You take up a piece of it, and 
the roof comes off. Then you don't know whether 
you are expected to eat the "floor" or not. And there 
is one kind of cake — I don't know the name of it. 
I never heard it called any names, except by unhappy 
men who had eaten fragments of it under compul- 
sion. It has this peculiar, soft, gaumy, sticky, fly-pa- 
per-like icing all over it. I don't know what you call 
it, but after you have eaten a piece you feel as though 
you had been fooling with the mucilage bottle. Or- 
dinarily you are not a very conceited man, but that 
night you are "dead stuck on yourself". 

Now, the boy doesn't want to eat anything, but he 



RISE AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 311 

thinks Society expects it of him, and he eats patiently 
down to the bottom; and by and by he gets down to 
the wafers — wafers, you know, about as thick as 
window-glass, not quite so nutritious, and with just 
about as much taste in them. I don't know what the 
women make them for, except to serve at these little 
gatherings. Well, the boy gets down to the wafers. 
Up to this time you haven't paid the slightest atten- 
tion to him. But just when he is loaded to the muz- 
zle with these dry, crumby, dusty, brittle things, you 
stand before him and ask him if he is "enjoying the 
evening". Poor boy, he feels he must answer you 
right away, promptly; he blows a perfect geyser of 
crumbs half-way across the room; then he gives one 
shuddering gasp and chokes all the rest of the eve- 
ning. 

26. But he is young, he has a good constitution, 
and he is strong; he lives through it, and goes home 
alone. Didn't intend to go home alone when he went 
there — oh, no, indeed ! He had another schedule. But 
when he reaches the end of the evening he feels faint 
and weak and cowardly. He sneaks out of the house 
without being observed, escapes and gets home unpur- 
sued. He doesn't even pause to tell his hostess, as 
his mother told him to be sure to do, that he has 
had "such a delightful evening", and he hopes he may 
be permitted to come again. But he feels better as he 
thinks it all over at home. He did have a good time. 
Alternately wretched and miserable and happy, dis- 
contented, humiliated, overjoyed he was all evening — 
but he liked it. He goes back to that house once, 



312 



THE DBUVBRY OF A SPEECH 



and again, and again, and yet again. Nor for more 
cake — oh, no, he has had all the cake he wants. 

He has discovered another kind of confectionery at 
that house, which is sweeter also than the honeycomb. 
Her name is Laura, or Helen, or something like that. 
And he goes to her home with two or three fellows; 
goes with half a dozen people ; and at last he goes all 
by himself. After the most elaborate grooming he 
ever gave himself, he feels that he is dressed like a 
tramp. He has a half-defined impression that every- 
thing he has on is a size too small for any other man 
of his size; that his boots are a trifle snug, like a 
house with four rooms for a family of thirty-seven; 
that the hat which sits so lightly on the crown of his 
head is jaunty but limited, like a junior clerk's salary; 
that his gloves are a neat fit, and can't be buttoned 
with a stump machine. Tom doesn't know all this : 
he has only a general vague impression that it may be 
so. And he doesn't know that his sisters know every 
line of it. For he has lived many years longer, and 
got in ever so much more trouble, before he learns 
that one bright, good, sensible girl — and I believe 
they are all that — will see and notice more in a 
glance, remember it more accurately, and talk more 
about it, than twenty men can see in a week. 

27. Tom does not know, for his crying feet will not 
let him, how he gets from his room to the earthly 
paradise where Laura lives. Nor does he know, after 
he gets there, that Laura sees him trying to rest one 
foot by setting it upon the heel. And she sees him 
sneak it back under his chair, and tilt it up on the toe 
for a change. She sees him fidget and fuss, she sees 



RISE AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 313 

the look of anguish flitting across his face under the 
heartless deceitful veneering of smiles, and she makes 
the mental remark that Master Tom would feel much 
happier, and much more comfortable, and more like 
staying longer, if he had worn his father's boots. 

But on his way to the house, despite the distraction 
of his crying feet, how many pleasant, really beauti- 
ful, romantic things Tom thinks up and recollects and 
compiles and composes to say to Laura, to impress 
her with his originality and wisdom and genius and 
bright exuberant fancy and general superiority over 
all the rest of Tom-kind. Real earnest things, you 
know; no hollow conventional compliments, or non- 
sense, but such things, Tom flatters himself, as none 
of the other fellows can or will say. And he has them 
all in beautiful order when he gets to the foot of the 
hill. The remark about the weather, to begin with; 
not the stereotyped old phrase, but a quaint, droll, hu- 
morous conceit that no one in the world but Tom could 
think of. Then, after the opening overture about the 
weather, something about music, and then something 
about art, and a profound thought or two on science 
and philosophy, and so on to poetry, and from poetry 
on an easy grade to "business". 

But alas, when Tom reaches the gate all these well- 
ordered ideas display evident symptoms of breaking 
up; as he crosses the yard, he is dismayed to know 
that they are in the convulsions of a panic, and when 
he touches the bell button every, each, all and several 
of the ideas, original and compiled, that he has had 
on any subject during the last ten years forsake him 
and return no more that evening. 



3 i4 THB DBLIVBRY OF A SPBBCH 

28. When Laura welcomed him at the door, he had 
intended to say something real splendid about the 
imprisoned sunlight of something beaming out a wel- 
come upon the what-you-may-call-it of the night or 
something. Instead of which he says, or rather gasps : 

"Oh, yes, to be sure ; to be sure ; ho." 

And then, conscious that he has not said anything 
particularly brilliant or original, or that most any of 
the other fellows could not say with a little practice, 
he adds, "Good morning!" And even this seems out 
of place at eight thirty p. m. Then he pulls himself 
together and asks, "How is your mother?" He is in- 
formed of "Ma's" well-being, and feeling that he has 
struck a conversational lead, he follows it a little 
deeper. "How is your father?" He is not greatly re- 
assured by the information that "Pa is around and 
kicking." But he prospects a little further and asks, 
"How are your parents?" And then he finds that his 
lead was only a pocket, and that he has already ex- 
hausted his first topic of conversation. 

He gets through the evening, though he never knows 
how. He hears his own voice, sounding far away. He 
sees Laura's face as in a mist, when he dares look at 
it. She says something about literature and he says 
he is reading "John Stuart Mill on the Floss." "Does 
he like it?" No, he doesn't read things he likes; he 
reads to feed his mind. "And does his mind require 
a great deal of feeding?" Then he wonders if she is 
laughing at him. By and by, sometime the same night, 
he looks at his watch again, and says it is time for 
him to go. But he doesn't go. He merely admits that 
it is time. Sits still for a long, long time after that. 



RISE AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 315 

Doesn't say much, but thinks a great deal. After a 
while he says, ''Well, really, I ought to go." 

Now, that is encouraging. He ought to go. It shows 
the young man is thinking seriously upon the subject 
of going. His conscience is working on him — he 
"ought to go" ; he is a young man of principle ; when 
he feels he ought to do a thing, he is not the kind of 
man to shirk his duty, and as he "ought" to go, why, 
by and by he goes. He doesn't rush out of the house 
violently, like a man going to a fire, upsetting the fur- 
niture and scaring the cat. No, he walks across the 
room, and down the hall, with the slow, steady, de- 
liberate, meditative, lingering tread of a man working 
by the day — for the city. When he gets out into the 
hall he runs into the hat-rack. He seems surprised to 
find there is a hat-rack there. He contemplates it for 
a long, long time. He says after a while, "Really, 
now, I must go." When you must do anything you 
do it. 

29. He goes at last. Goes as far as the door this 
time, and gets hold of the door-knob — clutches it, as 
a drowning man grasps a life-line. Seems astonished 
to find there is a knob on the door — had never no- 
ticed one there before. He clings to it as though he 
had determined if any burglar came down the street 
and tried to steal that door-knob, he would have to 
drag his dead body through the key-hole before he got 
away with it. By and by the opens the door as wide 
as it will go. He would open it wider, but the wall is 
in his way. He holds it open there in the middle of 
December, as though his one great ambition in life 
was to cool off that house before he died. He cools 



3 i6 THE DBLIVBRY OP A SPEECH 

it off; and the family is shivering to death in bed, 
when he finally manages to say a plain "Good night", 
such as you and I would say, whereas he intended to 
say a very sentimental, poetical good night. And as 
he goes down the steps he hears the door close behind 
him; he hears the key turn in the lock; he hears the 
chain shot into place, and he looks around to see what 
is the cause of all this haste, and the last light in the 
house has gloomed into darkness. 

He has been there only five or six hours, and that 
was his first formal call. What he will do when he 
gets more familiar with the family and feels a little 
more at home nQbody can guess. On his way home 
he feels what an utter fool he made of himself. Laura 
is not for him, and he will never think of her again. 
So he thinks of her all night. He thinks he was the 
awfulest ass that ever tried to entertain anybody. That 
girl will never want to see him again, never want to 
hear the dreary sound of his stupid voice — never; 
and he never will go back there again — never — 
never — never. 

30. He goes back the next night. And many other 
nights. Until at last there comes the night of a thou- 
sand nights. When a kindly Providence keeps every- 
body else out of the way. When there is nobody 
there but Tom and Laura, and the furniture, and a 
lamp that turns down, and the starlight looking in 
through the half-curtained windows. When, without 
knowing how or why, they talk about life and its real- 
ities instead of the last concert or the next lecture; 
when they talk of their plans, their day-dreams and as- 
pirations, and their ideals of real men and women; 



RISE AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 317 

they talk about the heroes and heroines of days long 
gone by, gray and dim in the ages that are ever made 
young and new by the lives of noble men and noble 
women who never died in those grand old days, but 
lived and live on, as fadeless as the stars. When the 
room seems strangely silent if for a moment their 
voices hush; when the flush of earnestness upon her 
face gives it a tinge of sadness that makes it more 
beautiful than ever ; when the dream of a home Eden, 
and home life, and home love, and a home-goddess 
with a face like Laura's, grows every moment more 
lovely, more entrancing to him, until at last poor, 
blundering, stupid Tom speaks without knowing 
what he is going to say, speaks without preparation or 
rehearsal, just speaks, and his honest manly heart 
touches his faltering lips with eloquence and tender- 
ness and earnestness, that all the rhetoric in the world 
never did and never will inspire; and — That is all 
we know about it. Nobody knows what he says, or 
how he says it. 

And when he goes away from her home that night, 
with the answer in his heart he had hoped and prayed 
for, although he knew he didn't deserve it, he goes out 
into that wondrous night a new man, into a new 
world. There are constellations in the sky he never 
saw before. It is a new world, and he is a new man, 
with new hopes and new aspirations, new ambitions 
and new purposes. His whole life is transformed by 
a woman's love. No wonder he walks home on the 
air, about ten feet up above the earth, which is the 
planet we inhabit, by permission of the trusts. Tom 
abides in this altitudinous condition of things for sev- 



3 i8 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

eral days. He doesn't come down for his meals. 
Meals ! "Victuals !" Air is rich enough for his 
blood. A little atmosphere on a crystal salver is all 
he wants, three times a day. He lives on the essence 
of her name breathed into a "vawse". 

31. But Laura brings him down to earth one eve- 
ning when they are sitting down together, brings him 
down with a thud. She wants to know if he has 
said anything about this, by the way, to "Pa". Pa! 
Tom had forgotten there was such a creature on earth 
as Pa. It hasn't occurred to him that Pa had any 
connection with this circus at all. Now, he under- 
stands that Pa is the gentleman in the middle of the 
ring, with the long whip. He is the ring-master, who 
makes the animals and the performers go around. No, 
he hadn't said anything to Pa. He says he didn't think 
of it — he hasn't had time ; he hasn't seen him ; they 
were taking account of stock this week. No, he hasn't 
yet, but he will some time. There was no hurry about 
it — the old gentleman would last, wouldn't he, a 
few weeks longer? 

Tom had not exactly, as you might say, poured out 
his heart to Pa. Somehow or other he had a rose- 
colored idea that the thing was going to go right along 
in this way forever. Tom had a thought that the pro- 
gram was all arranged, printed and distributed, rose- 
colored, gilt-edged and perfumed. He was going to 
sit and hold Laura's hands, and Pa was to stay down 
at the office, and Ma was to make her visits like an- 
gels'. But he sees, now that the matter has been re- 
ferred to, that Pa is a grim necessity. And Laura does- 
n't like to see such a spasm of terror pass over Tom's 



RISE AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 319 

face; and her lips quiver a little as she hides her 
flushed face out of sight on Tom's shoulder, and tells 
him how kind and tender Pa has always been with 
her, until Tom feels positively jealous of him. And she 
tells him that he must not dread going to see Pa, for 
Pa will be, oh, so glad to know how happy, happy, 
happy he can make Pa's little girl. And as she talks 
of him — the hard-working, old-fashioned man, who 
loves his girls as though he were yet only a big boy — 
her heart grows tenderer, and she speaks so elo- 
quently that Tom, at first savagely jealous of him, is 
persuaded to fall in love with the old gentleman — he 
calls him "Pa", too. "Why," he says 'Tm not afraid 
of your father. For that matter, I'm not afraid of 
any man that ever walked on buffalo-grass. I will go 
and see him now if you want me to." No, not right 
now ; she thinks it isn't necessary right now, but some- 
time soon. He will go down tomorrow afternoon — 
and he does. 

32. He commits to memory a beautiful speech, an 
impressive, persuasive, convincing speech. He walks 
right down to the private office at the end of the store 
where it says "No Admittance" on the glass door. 
He opens the door and walks right up to the old man 
sitting at the desk, and looks him right in the eye, bold 
as a sheep. The old gentleman lifts his head and looks 
Tom in the eye. Once. Just once. That is enough. 
Tom takes the count after that. He wasn't sure 
whether the old man looked him in the eye or poked 
him in the eye. It has the same effect on him; it 
knocks his speech endwise. 

By and by he starts in the middle of a sentence and 



3 2o THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

says it both ways, leaves out all the verbs and forgets 
all the substantives. But he gets through alive, and 
he tells Laura that night — oh, he says, if she could 
only have heard what he said to her father! He 
walked right up to him, and he wishes he could re- 
member the speech he made. If Daniel Webster could 
have heard that speech he would have turned over in 
his grave. Likely he would — he would have come 
out of it with a brick. Only one man on earth could 
have understood what the boy was trying to say, and 
that happened to be the man he was talking to, and 
he understood him because he knew all the symp- 
toms. He had been there himself, and a man never 
gets over it. But when you come to this crisis in your 
life, my son, don't you make up any speech for Pa. 
You wouldn't remember it if you did. Pa wouldn't 
be moved by it, hard-headed, solid, matter-of-fact man 
of business that he is. You get him alone first — 
that is the main thing. Tell him you would like to see 
him alone for a couple of minutes, if he has an hour 
or two to spare. Then he will know what you want 
right away. 

He understands, when a young man of your age 
comes in at the busiest time of a busy day, and asks 
him for a private interview, that you are either going 
to ask him for his daughter or try to borrow money 
of him. It amounts to the same thing in the end. So 
he will be ready for you in either case. Oh, of course, 
if there are two or three sisters in the family, if I 
were you I would mention the name of the particular 
girl I was after. Because, if you leave it to Pa to se- 
lect the member of his family that he thinks is best 



RISE AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 321 

adapted to your needs and age, it will be just like him 
to offer you the old lady. You get her anyhow, son; 
you needn't worry about that. 

33. Then you mustn't hurry the old man. We have 
an idea when a man gets about fifty years old that all 
the sentiment in his heart has been burned to ashes 
long years ago in the struggle for life, with the fierce 
competition in the market, and the contact with other 
keen fighting men. But sometimes, when the boy and 
the man stand and sit there, looking at each other, the 
counting-room, with the heavy shadows lurking in 
every corner, with its time-worn furnishings, with the 
scanty dash of sunlight breaking in through the dusty 
window, looks like an old painting; the beginning and 
finishing of a race : one man nearly ready to lay his 
armor off, glad to be so nearly and so safely through 
with the contest that Tom, in all his inexperience and 
with his enthusiasm and conceit of a young man, is 
just getting ready to run and fight, or fight and run, 
you never can tell which until he is through with it. 

The old man, looking at Tom, and through him, and 
past him, without seeing him, feels his heart throb 
almost as quickly as does that of the young man be- 
fore him. For, looking down a long vista of years 
bordered with roseate hopes and bright dreams and 
anticipations, he sees a tender face, radiant with smiles 
and kindled with blushes ; he feels a soft hand drop 
into his own with its timid pressure ; he sees the vi- 
sion open, under the summer stars, down mossy hill- 
sides, where the restless breezes, sighing through the 
rustling leaves, whisper their secret to the noisy katy- 
dids ; strolling along winding paths, deep in the bend- 



322 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

ing wild grass, down in the aisles of the dim old 
woods; loitering where the meadow brook sparkles 
over the white pebbles or murmurs around the great 
flat stepping-stones ; lingering on the foot-bridge, 
while he gazes into eyes eloquent and tender in their 
silent love-light; up through the long pathway of 
years, flecked and checkered with sunshine and cloud, 
with storm and calm, through years of struggle, trial, 
sorrow, disappointment, out at last into the crowning 
beauty and benison of hard-won and well-deserved 
success, he sees now this second Laura, re-imaging in 
all her girlish grace and loveliness of face and figure, 
and echoing, in the music of her voice, her mother — 
just as her mother was, back in the dear, old, sun- 
crowned days, "When all the days were made of 
gold, and all the nights of silver", when Laura's 
mother was a "little girl", and Laura's father was a 
boy like Tom. And Pa, brushing "nothing" out of 
his eyes, tells Tom he'll think it over and see him 
again — oh, well — about nine o'clock next week. 

34. And so they are duly and formally engaged; 
and the very first thing they do, they make the very 
sensible, though very uncommon resolution so to con- 
duct themselves that no one will ever suspect it. And 
they succeed admirably. No one ever does suspect 
it. They come into church in time to hear the bene- 
diction — every time they come together. They shun 
all other people when church is dismissed, and are 
seen to go home alone the longest way. At picnics 
they are missed not more than fifty times a day, and 
are discovered sitting under a lone and silent tree, 
holding each other's hands, gazing into each other's 



RISE AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 323 

eyes. They call this acting coldly toward each other. 
They do look as though they were trying to keep each 
other from freezing to death. 

If, at sociable or festival, they are left alone in a 
dressing-room a second and a half, Laura emerges 
with her ruffles standing around like a railroad acci- 
dent; and Tom has enough good complexion on his 
shoulder to go around a young ladies' seminary. When 
they drive out, they sit in a buggy with a seat eighteen 
inches wide, and there is two feet of unoccupied room 
at either end of it. Long years afterward, when they 
drive, a flat-car isn't too wide for them ; and when they 
walk, you could drive a load of hay between them. 

They come to me, sometimes, these light-hearted 
children, and say they are "the happiest people in all 
this world". And when I ask why this superlative 
felicity, they say they have been engaged for six 
weeks. Oh, well; they are happy, are as happy as 
children and birds and kittens know how to be. They 
have all the happiness they will hold, but they don't 
hold very much. Children between twenty and thirty 
have a very limited capacity for happiness. If I should 
pick out the happiest lovers I know, I wouldn't select 
the boy and girl, with the morning light shining on 
their faces, or the starlight gleaming in their eyes. I 
would choose your white-haired old grandfather, and 
your grandmother with the silver locks. 

35. Some people say, "Oh, Grandma and Grand- 
pa! — they are not sentimental. They are not at all 
lover-like. They are as matter-of-fact as the multi- 
plication table." Yes, but don't you know these gray- 
haired old lovers can teach you that love is a rose 



324 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

that rarely unfolds to its perfection in the morning 
sunshine? It takes more than the laughing, singing, 
dancing months of your engagement to teach you what 
love is. It takes years of deep and wide life experi- 
ences. It takes years to learn and to understand each 
other's little infirmities of temper and disposition; 
years of sharing sorrow and heartache, as well as 
laughter and joy; years of bearing each other's bur- 
dens, years of life's woes and life's work, it takes to 
interweave two hearts so closely that every throb in 
one awakens an answering thought in the other. Love 
that has been tried by the wet fleece and by the dry; 
love that has been tested a thousand times in a thou- 
sand ways, and has never once faltered in its pa- 
tience, in its loyalty, and its devotion. By and by, lover 
and sweetheart, you will love each other in that way — 
not this year, nor the next. But after many years, 
this blessing will come. 

Then dawns the wedding-day. The wedding day ! 
Everybody about the house laughing, happy and 
bright — everybody singing and chatting, with one 
exception. Somebody cries. At every wedding you 
ever attended in your life somebody cried. You can 
hear her all through the ceremony — sniff, sniff, 
sniff! Sounds like somebody trying to make re- 
sponses to the service with a cold in his head. And 
another thing: the person who is crying at the wed- 
ding is always somebody who is not being married. 
Every time. The people who are being married seem 
to stand it bravely. 

36. Poor Ma, no wonder she cries, when she real- 
izes what it means to her. Ma, with the thousand and 



RISE AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 325 

one anxieties attendant on the great event in her 
daughter's life hidden away under her dear smiling 
face, away down under the glistening eyes, deep in 
the loving heart; Ma, hurrying here and fluttering 
there, in the intense excitement of something strange- 
ly made up of happiness and grief, of apprehension 
and hope; Ma, with her sudden disappearances and 
flushed reappearances, indicating struggles and tri- 
umphs in the turbulent world down-stairs ; Ma, seeing 
that everything is going right, from kitchen to dress- 
ing-rooms ; looking after everything and everybody, 
with her hands and heart just as full as they will hold, 
and more voices calling, "Ma", from every room in the 
house than you would think one hundred "Mas" could 
answer ; Ma, with the quivering lip and glistening eyes, 
who has to be cheerful, and lively, and smiling; be- 
cause, if, as she thinks of the dearest and best-loved 
of her little flock going away from her sheltering arms 
into the keeping of another heart, she lets the fear and 
sorrow cloud her eyes for one moment, she hears a 
reproachful whisper — "Oh-h, Ma !" How it all comes 
back to Laura, like the tender shadow of a dream, 
long years after the mother-love that shone in the 
quiet eyes has gone out in darkness in the dear old 
home ; how sweetly the vision comes back to the bride 
when she is a mother! 

And Pa — dear old "Dad", wandering about the 
house as though he were lost in his own home; blun- 
dering into rooms where he has no business, and get- 
ting himself repelled therefrom with hysterical shrieks 
and gigglings ; Pa, who gets tired of people who laugh 
and chatter, and gets away from them for a little min- 



326 THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

ute, hiding himself in an empty room, where he stands 
at the window by himself, and looks out, dreaming of 
his little girl going away today out of the old home 
into the new one. 

37. Why, only yesterday she was a dimpled, dainty, 
white-robed baby girl, the lily blossom that brought 
the first music of baby cooing into his home; his lit- 
tle baby girl. Then a little girl in short dresses, with 
schoolgirl troubles and schoolgirl pleasures, but yet 
his little girl. And then an older little girl still — his 
comrade now, and companion — but still his little 
girl. He feels the caressing touch of her white arms 
about his neck, he hears her ringing laugh, he sees 
again the romping ways he loved so well — his little 
girl. Then an older "little girl", out of school, and 
into society, admired, beloved, and at last — 

But this is as far as he cares to think. Because, 
somehow, his father heart sees in the flight of this, his 
first-born, by and by the flight of all the other fledg- 
lings of his flock. He thinks, when they all have mated 
and flown away, how empty and desolate the old home 
nest will seem. He thinks how, in the years to come, 
when his girls shall make other homes bright and 
beautiful with the music of their voices and the light 
of their faces, mother will sit sometimes in the old 
home, beside the empty cradle that rocked them all, 
tenderly singing once more, with quivering lips and 
faltering voice, the cradle songs that in the olden days 
brooded so tenderly over all their baby sleep, until 
at last the rising tears will choke the song, and the 
swaying cradle will stand still, silent and empty, and 
back over river and prairie, mountain and desert, from 



RISE AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 327 

new homes in the newer lands, come drifting back 
into the old home and its silence the tender cadences 
of the songs the children used to sing at home. Come 
back again the murmured prayers from the whisper- 
ing lips, rising like the incense of the evening sacrifice 
around the dear loving altar of the mother knees. Come 
back the snatches of their childish plays. Come back 
all the love and the beauty of their childhood, until the 
old home, bereft of its little ones, is blessed so ten- 
derly with their memories. 

Old and gray the absent children may be now, with 
other children clustering like olive plants about their 
knees, but to the mother love that goes out into the 
world with every one of us, they are "the children" 
still. Down to white-haired old age, in her letters to 
them, in her talk about them, in her prayers for 
them, on her loving lips and deep in her tender heart, 
they are her "boys" and her "girls". 

38. We thank God it is so. We thank God for the 
human love that is so like the love divine, that when 
the great All-father would make His children under- 
stand the tenderness of His love, the only phrase He 
could put on the lips of His prophet was, "As one 
whom his mother comforteth, so will I." It is as 
though we could never understand the love of God if 
we had never known the love of a mother. 

No wonder a man wants to be a boy again some- 
times. No wonder that sometimes, amid the storms 
and conflicts, in all the troubles and toils of life, a 
man longs for just one little moment to go back to 
her, just to creep into her arms once more; once more 
to lean his head on the dearest, sweetest, tenderest 



328 THB DELIVERY OF A SPBBCH 

pillow that ever a head with an ache, or a heart with 
a sorrow in it, rested itself upon, and for one happy 
moment cry away all the troubles and sorrows and 
disappointments of his manhood years, God pity him! 
He can't. Because maybe the mother love is gone. 
And, anyhow, he can't, because he is a man, and the 
troubles and sorrows of manhood are sorrows that 
you can't cry away in your mother's arms. You have 
to set your teeth and turn your face to the storm, and 
let it rain and drive against your face, because you are 
a man. 

The boy won't always have the mother arms to 
run to, when somebody tramples on his heart or some- 
body hurt his feelings ; when he is defeated and dis- 
crowned. That's a good thing for the boy to remem- 
ber before he forgets it. And the mother — oh, her 
arms will ache, ache, ache a thousand times more 
with their emptiness than ever they did with the weight 
of a tousled head and the grimy face that came tear- 
stained to her for comfort. That is a good thing for 
the mother to remember before the boy grows up. 

39. In conclusion, the young people have a final 
spasm of superhuman wisdom. They are going to 
keep house. They are going to get ready for house- 
keeping the first thing. They are going to have that 
house stocked from cellar to garret and back again, 
with everything they need for a whole year — every- 
thing in the market. Just as well, Tom says, to get 
everything at once and have it delivered right up at 
the house, as to spend five or six or ten or twenty 
years in stocking up a home, as his father did. And 
Laura thinks so, too, and she wonders that Tom, 



RISB AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 329 

young as he is, should know so much more than his 
father. Tom wonders at this himself, and it puzzles 
him until he is forty-five or fifty years old, and has a 
young Tom of his own to advise him. So the young 
people make out this wonderful list of all the things 
they have to have, with the proper quantities and 
prices, so they won't outrun their little income — fifty 
cents' worth of flour ; two dollars' worth of chewing- 
gum — little things like that. They revise this list 
until it is humanly complete. 

Then, the first time they want anything to eat, they 
discover there isn't a knife or a fork or a plate or a 
spoon in the new house. And the first day the laun- 
dress comes, and the water is hot, and the clothes 
are all ready, it is discovered that there isn't a wash- 
tub nearer than the grocery. And further along in 
the day the discovery is made that while Tom has 
bought a clothes-line that will reach to the north pole 
and back, and then has to be coiled up a mile or two, 
there isn't a clothes-pin in the settlement. And, in 
the course of a week or two. Tom slowly awakens 
to the realization of the fact that he has only begun 
to get. 

When the first meal is prepared in the little home — 
no, that is wrong. The first meal never is "pre- 
pared", — it is eaten raw — they take dinner with 
Ma. They'd starve to death the first month if it was- 
n't for Ma — her Ma — the one Tom makes jokes 
about. 

The fact is, they have just begun to buy things. 
They live in the sweet buy and buy, long before they 
get to it. If Tom should live to be a hundred years 



33o THE DELIVERY OF A SPEECH 

old, they would think, just before he died, of some 
things they had wanted for seventy-five years, which 
Tom had always forgotten to get. He says, in ex- 
tenuation of his fault, that he "can't remember ten 
thousand things every time he goes out of the house; 
he has something to do besides shopping and market- 
ing". He is right. Five thousand are as many things 
as a married man can carry on his mind at one time. 
Some men have very poor memories, and can only re- 
member one thousand things — and they must all be 
the same thing. Then sometimes they remember it. 
Tom goes on saying he "forgot" until he is ashamed 
to say it any more. It is such a puerile reason. 

40. One day he comes home with a new excuse. He 
says he did order the things but the man forgot to 
fetch them up. I don't know whether you ought to 
call that a lie or not. It sounds like one — it is not 
absolute truth. But I don't know about this remark 
being a lie, because a lie is something that is calcu- 
lated to deceive. That statement never deceives any- 
body — it is perfectly harmless. Young husband, never 
lie to your wife. Not only because it is mean, cruel, 
brutal, cowardly ; but it is such a waste of talent. She 
knows you, backward and forward, she knows you in 
and out, round and round, crisscross, zigzag, and so 
back to the place of beginning. She can tell you when 
you are telling her the straight honest truth, and when 
you are telling her big wicked "whacks", just as well 
by looking at your shoulder-blades as you go out of 
the door as she can when she looks you right in the 
eye. She knows you. And sometime, some day of 
mutual knowledge, you will know your little wife just 



MSB AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 331 

as thoroughly and just as intuitively as she knows 
you today. But, by that time you will both of you 
have been in Heaven about two thousand years. 

Day by day their oldest and best friend, old Time, 
comes along, and looks into the little home to see how 
the young people are getting along. He loves young 
people, because he sees what beautiful material they 
are of which to make the loveliest kind of old people ; 
and if you give him half a chance, children, that is just 
what he will do with you, and he will do it beauti- 
fully. He has a little memorandum of things the 
young people need ; he has thought of things you never 
have dreamed of, or would think of. 

The first thing that old Time brings is a little pros- 
perity — just enough to make your heart sing for 
gladness. You had that down in your little book. 
Then he has a little adversity. Just enough to put the 
soul into the song of the heart that it couldn't have 
without it. He brings just enough sunshine to make 
the roses and lilies blossom in your lives. You had 
that down, too, in your little book. Then he has writ- 
ten down for you once in a while some beautiful gray 
days. You don't love the gray days now. You want 
the sunshiny days, the roses and the carnations. Let 
me tell you, children, you will love the gray days just 
as well when they come. Some day, when the heart 
is wearied, when the eyes are hot and tired and dry 
with weeping, when the face is burned by the noonday 
sun, you will know how like a kiss of blessedness from 
Heaven comes the soft cool touch of the mist, creep- 
ing up out of the sea or coming down over the moun- 
tain, until it folds you in a little curtain of gray, soft 



332 THB DBLIVBRY OF A SPBBCH 

as the wings of a dove, and shuts you in with peace 
and rest and hope, and the tenderness of God. Oh, you 
will thank God again and again for the gray days. 

41. Old Time brings into the house, by and by, the 
cooing music of a baby voice. The baby ! He puts 
tone and color and meaning into the home. Why, peo- 
ple come into your little home, and they look at the 
beautiful furniture. They don't say, "Did that table 
come over in the Mayflower?" Oh, no — it looks too 
slick and glossy and Grand Rapidsy for that. But one 
unemployed day the baby gets at it with the scissors 
and a tack-hammer. Then when people ask, "Did 
that lovely antique table come over in the Mayflower ?" 
you reply, with a superior air, "Oh, no ! That came 
over in the Ark." 

So Time comes and goes, bringing memories and 
blessings. Sends a messenger, one day, to take young 
Tom to college, and when he goes away, he leaves a 
great aching quiet in the home, harder to endure than 
the noisest noise any boy ever made. Time brings him 
home from college by and by, and with him a college 
yell that makes all the other noises he ever made in his 
life, all put together and megaphoned, sound in com- 
parison like deep, profound, religious silence. And it 
makes life seem real and earnest to Tom, and brings 
the old laugh rippling over Laura's face, when they 
see old Tom's first mustache, budding into second life, 
on young Tom's face. 

And still old Time comes on his rounds, bringing 
each year whiter frosts to scatter on the whitening 
mustache, and brighter gleams of silver to glint the 
brown of Laura's hair. Bringing the blessings of old 



RISE AND FALL OF MUSTACHE 333 

age and a love-locked home to crown these common- 
place, workaday, human lives, bristling with human 
faults, marred with human mistakes, scarred and 
seamed and rifted with human troubles, and crowned 
with the compassion that only perfection can send upon 
imperfection. Comes, with happy memories of the 
past, and quiet confidence for the future. Comes, with 
the changing scenes of day and night; comes, with 
the sunny peace and the backward dreams of age ; 
comes, with December's drifting snows, and comes — ■ 
just as often — with the perfumed roses of beautiful 
June. Comes, until one day, in the golden harvest- 
time, the eye of the old reaper rests upon old Tom, 
standing right in the line of the swath, amid the rip- 
ened grain. The sweep of the noiseless scythe, whose 
edge is never turned; Time passes on; old Tom steps 
aside, out of young Tom's way, and the mysterious 
beautiful cycle of a life, ending always where it be- 
gins, and beginning ever where it ends, is complete. 



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